Hot Picks

HIP (High Intellectual Potential)

Type: Drama
Length: 8 x 52 minutes
Producer: Septembre Production; Itinéraire Productions
Broadcaster: TF1 (France)

‘Strong lead characters, good pace and sense of humour throughout’

Morgane Alvaro, the unlikely hero of French broadcaster TF1’s hit drama series HIP (High Intellectual Potential), is a flamboyantly dressed cleaning lady and mother-of-three in her late 30s, who has an IQ of 160.

While her high intellect has never helped in her daily life, this Erin Brockovich-style character’s potential comes to light in the opening episode when she ‘tidies up’ elements on a police investigation board.

The detectives in charge, Céline Hazan (Marie Denardaud) and Adam Karadec (Homeland actor Mehdi Nebbou), realise that Morgane has brought them closer to finding the suspect and decide to bring her on board to help them solve other cases.

Morgane – played by Audrey Fleurot, the star of hit detective series Spiral – agrees to work with the police.

The eight-part police procedural was written by a pair of French TV regulars: Nicolas Jean and Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, who both worked on the serial killer mini-series The Mantis (La Mante) for Netflix.

HIP’s first series was a ratings success for TF1 when it launched in April this year – pulling in 11.5 million viewers (including catch-up), which equated to a 52% share of the channel’s key target demographic of women aged 25 to 49.

Made by Septembre Productions and Itinéraire Productions, the series has already been recommissioned for a second run.

Newen Connect executive vice-president of distribution Leona Connell says the series resonated with audiences “because of its strong lead characters, good pace and sense of humour throughout”.

Connell adds that interest from buyers has been bolstered by the fact that fewer procedurals have emerged from the US due to the pandemic.

The series has already sold to Rai 1 in Italy and Antena 3 in Spain. Other buyers include Sony in Portugal and NPO in the Netherlands, as well as Swiss broadcaster RTS and Fox in Poland. Newen has also sealed a pan-Latin American deal and sold HIP into Germany, the Balkans, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Greece and Canada.

The Traveller (Le Voyageur)

Type: Drama
Length: 4 x 90-minutes
Producer: Telecip
Broadcaster: France 3 (France)

Eric Cantona’s reinvention from ‘King of Old Trafford’ to the king of the scripted series continues with this detective story from Telecip, a production label owned by Newen subsidiary Telfrance.

The series is essentially four 90-minute TV movies penned by Hervé Korian (Papillon Noir, Vidock, Puzzle) and directed by Stéphanie Murat, which sees Cantona play retired maverick detective Thomas Bareski.

His character is a nature-loving ex-cop who lives out of the back of a van and has made it his life’s mission to help solve some of France’s 310 unsolved killings. His first case brings him to a small French town to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, where he encounters her mother Christine (Audrey Dana) who has been left in an endless state of grief.

The show covers the familiar ground of French detective fiction that performs well on France 3, and its charismatic lead helped the broadcaster pull in a five million viewing average in its prime-time slot, with a second season currently in production.

The drama also follows hot-on-the heels of Cantona’s start turn in six-part Netflix series Inhuman Resources (Dérapages) in which he plays an ageing, jobless blue-collar worker who becomes the henchman for a global firm.

The Traveller currently has pre-buys with RTBF in Belgium and RTS Switzerland while Newen Distribution’s head of international sales Nadia Chevallard expects strong interest in many European territories, particularly Spain and Italy – although she adds it may well attract fans of a certain age from a variety of territories keen to follow the former French captain and Manchester United forward’s post-football career.