Morgana: La detective genial

Story: well, not all the episodes are perfect (a couple are exaggerated, I mean on investigation side and some things on the investigation process is taken lightly), but this show does really entertain! There is the background story which is very intriguing and keeps the interest alight, and there also is the romance, funny, drama, and serious side!

Actress & Actors and Acting: personally, I really like the cast, they all are very good. Very well done, guys!

Conclusion: if you are searching for something not very difficult, funny and with some romance along, well, this show will probably suits you! If you can't stand even the slightly mistake, well, I advise you to go watch other stuff as Orphan Black.

I've really loved this first season, and hope a second season is coming soon.

Although the commited crimes are serious, the investigation is anything but serious. But it doesn't matter. It's the way the main characters have to work with each other that makes it so fun to watch.

Lille's police force is, to put it gently, not presented as the most intelligent force on earth, the plot is very thin, the proofing is so far fetched that it isn't believable anymore.

But this shouldn't be seen as a French Morse or Lewis. Neither as more serious detectives like Vera. It's a comedy with murder victems as the red line for the clashing and attractiveness between the main characters.

So yes, as Lucien Stam already mentioned, it fits in the same category as Death in Paradise.

Last night I finished watching the first season on Rai1, dubbed in Italian.

This show works.

I will get into some details to explain why and how, but in a nutshell it works simply because it does what TV should always do: entertain!

Close in spirit to Monk and The Good Cop, but even closer to The Mentalist, "HPI" delivers curiosity and fun. The premise of the series may lean heavily on the unlikely looks and attitudes of Morgane Alvaro (Audrey Fleurot) who begins to work as a consultant for the police, but what keeps your interest afloat is how well the stories are crafted.

I hate it when a cop show focuses too much on the lead characters at the expense of ignoring the credibility of the crime stories. Thankfully, HPI has not fallen into this trap. The motivations and the solid mechanisms are always there for our heroes to find out, and the interactions of Morgane Alvaro with the suspects add spice to what is basically a well-thought "whodunnit".

In that sense, my favorite episode was the 5th. The nature of the crime folded out elegantly as the investigation progressed and the loose ends got tied, and I do not recall having seen this kind of a plot before in fiction. So, even if there was some influence behind the originality there, at least it was not an overused theme.

Episode 7 was the least credible in terms of the criminal's motivation and method, but still it was okay.

Toiling over storylines and characters can at times be rewarding for the creator like in this series, but there is something else that I find notable with HPI: The colors.

The realm they present is particularly colorful and even shiny at times. Having been to Lille, yes, I can confirm it is a nice city with enough interesting locations around to feed such a series with settings. However, I think Audrey Fleurot being a "red head" also helps the plastics of the show. She is a strangely attractive woman who looks both like a time-trevelled Red Sonja and a grown-up-yet-still-childish Peppermint Patty.

As her bright red hair contributes visually to the frames, her high spirits carry the show well, also thanks to Mehdi Nebbou (Adam Karadec) who is credible as a calm, serious, yet tolerant police detective. The duo is like a gender-switched version of one of my favorite shows ever, Moonlighting.

With the lead character being a single mom of multiple children, I suspect also Candice Renoir might have been among its sources for inspiration, but HPI is definitely much better paced and more rich in texture, both visually and story-wise. The humor is well-balanced, works fine in the Italian translation and dubbing, so I don't see why there would be a notable loss with a potential English edition on that front.

As for the few downsides:

The rapid, patchwork imagery they employ to show us how Morgane's mind works... I find it too fast. She connects certain dots to reach a conclusion that makes sense, and yes, she has various references (something she read on a cereal carton, a documentary she watched, etc.) and using cut out images, clips, this and that in a pop fashion is a good idea, at least better than leaning on verbal narration. But we also need things to sink in. And speeding those particular phases up so much does not help.

Another problem I notice is kind of like an Achille's heel: When you come up with such a concept and feel the need to sharpen it, some very basic things about the title character may not add up. In this case, one can find it difficult to believe a woman as smart and as attractive as Morgane Alvaro could not find a way to reach success and wealth in 21st century France, not till some police chief discovered her abilities could be used to solve crimes. Well, she could at least write a TV show, right?

"Having problems with authority" is mentioned as the excuse to how come she ended up with three kids and low paying jobs, but nowadays whole generations have "problems with authority" and it doesn't stop anyone. The Morgane Alvaro we see could well have established something great for herself, be it in the IT business or entertainment.

Well... This is why we should not dig too deep into stuff that is supposed to be "make believe" by definition.

Overall, HPI has enough potential to go on for many seasons. And I think it deserves worldwide recognition and attention as a worthy, fun, intelligent detective show.

The kind of humour reminds me of Death in Paradise. Very funny, quite original, certainly not your average detective. All players perform wonderfully. Each part is great and they work together impeccably. You have to watch it in French, with subtitles, dubbed would be less funny. The voice of Audrey can't be dubbed good enough.

Morgane is brilliant and the totally chaotic, graphic and anti procedural way she figures everything out, is captivating to watch. Fleurot is a beautiful actrice, but they only thing that annoys me tremendously is the long fake shiny transparent nails she wears, that appear over a hundred times in closeup on the screen, each episode. It is really very annoying, way too much. Fleurots hands are really made ugly this way, which they aren't in real life at all.

Apart from that, the 8 episodes produced are great and I hope we will see more of them.

/refers to Season 1/

Mrs. Fleurot is a really versatile actress, I have seen her in several other series (Engrenages, Un village français, Safe, etc.) and here she is so different - not frigid, not serious, but frivolous and careless... And she steals the show in every episode, even Mehdi Nebbou (a good actor as well) is not totally fitting/merited companion to her.

The cases are of different smoothness, but yet with twists, and even if you figure out the wrongdoer soon, there is always something behind until almost the very end. All in all, 8 points from me - 9 for Fleurot´s performance and 7 for script (realism included). And I am looking forward to Season 2.

PS Season 2 and 3 are as pleasant, with many unexpected twists included and an expected solution not included :) Crimes and criminals are never pleasant, but circumstances and/or people investigating them can be...

PPS Season 4 included more sad and confusing moments, but still - the quality is maintained. And more stuff to come, apparently.