ABC’s ‘High Potential’ Replacement Could Come From the BBC’s Near-Perfect Detective Hit

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Kaitlin Olson as Morgan Gillory holding a post-it note in the Season 2 finale of High Potential

Published Oct 9, 2026, 5:10 PM EDT

Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories.

Since premiering on ABC two years ago, High Potential has become one of the network's standout procedurals. Based on the French-Belgian series HPI, the show follows Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson), a night cleaner for the LAPD who has a rare High Potential intellect. After taking it upon herself to solve a case one night, Morgan is hired as a consultant for the LAPD's Major Crimes Division, for whom she solves cases each week. High Potential fans eagerly await the show's return after it was moved to ABC's spring lineup this year, and the show will no doubt come back with a bang after last season's cliffhanger ending.

In the meantime, High Potential fans can look forward to another similar show from ABC soon. BBC One's Ludwig premiered around the same time as High Potential, and it has since become a massive success. The cozy murder mystery just concluded its second season last month, and it's already been confirmed for a third, with a bonus Christmas special set to release this December. Now, Deadline has just announced that a US remake of Ludwig, called Rabbit, has officially been given a pilot order by ABC. The series will be written by Megan Ganz and Humphrey Ker, who will also serve as executive producers.

ABC's 'Rabbit' Is Set To Follow the Same Premise as 'Ludwig'

Ludwig follows John Taylor (David Mitchell), a brilliant man who struggles with anxiety and discomfort in social situations. John lives a quiet and isolated life, but secretly, he's an expert puzzle maker. Using the pen name Ludwig, John writes and publishes his own books of puzzles, and he has since become wildly successful while maintaining anonymity. The series kicks off when John's twin brother, James (also played by Mitchell), goes missing. James is a Detective Chief Inspector for the Cambridge police force, and his wife, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), believes that his disappearance could be related to any one of the recent cases that he was working. With Lucy's encouragement, John goes undercover as James at his workplace to try to figure out what happened to him.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek

Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.

⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)

💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)

⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)

🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)

FIND YOUR PEOPLE →

What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.

AThe same thing I have watched a hundred times. BSomething long, slow and beautiful. CSomething big and loud with a great score. DOne clever episode of something hopeful.

NEXT QUESTION →

How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.

AI know every character and all the gossip. BI have read the appendices and studied the maps. CI have a ranked opinion on every instalment. DI want to know how the world actually works.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.

AWhich one of us is which type. BWhether the adaptation got it right. CWhether the new stuff ruined the old stuff. DWhether the right thing was actually done.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.

AGreat, and I will know everybody by the end. BFine, as long as they take it seriously. CBrilliant, especially if there is something to dress up for. DHappy, provided the conversation is interesting.

NEXT QUESTION →

Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.

AAn old castle somewhere rainy. BMountains, long walks, no phone signal. CA desert with an unbelievable night sky. DA city built around a university.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.

AMost of them turn out better than expected. BThe smallest ones decide the biggest things. CAnybody can change, even very late on. DWe work it out if we keep talking.

NEXT QUESTION →

What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.

AEverything I owned when I was twelve. BHardbacks, in order, read more than once. CFigures, posters, and a few things still boxed. DBooks about how things work, plus a model or two.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.

AA place I can go back to whenever I need it. BA world complete enough to get lost in. CSomething huge I can share with everybody. DAn idea that changes how I think.

REVEAL MY FANDOM →

Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…

Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.

Harry Potter

You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.

You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped.
This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be.
The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love.
The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again.

Lord of the Rings

You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.

You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument.

Star Wars

You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.

You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution.
The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time.

Star Trek

You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.

You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

John may not have any experience as a DCI, but there is nobody better than he is at solving puzzles, and he soon finds that murder mysteries are their own sort of puzzles. While trying to solve the overarching mystery of James' disappearance, John continues to pretend to be James at work. As such, he takes on cases meant for James, and he uses his unique puzzle-making abilities to approach these cases from a new perspective. Rabbit is set to follow the same main premise as Ludwig, although it will be set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a puzzle maker named Mark secretly publishes under the alias of Rabbit. Mark's twin brother is a homicide detective, so, like John, he goes undercover in his place to try to solve the mystery of his disappearance.

'High Potential' and 'Ludwig's Success Suggest a Promising Future for 'Rabbit'

Aside from Ludwig's massive success, the immense popularity of High Potential and ABC's other crime procedurals – The Rookie, Will Trent, and R.J. Decker, suggest that the network is the perfect place for Rabbit. The move to remake a popular European show for network TV in the US has paid off time and time again, outside of High Potential, from The Office to Ghosts to Doc. The key move with US remakes is that the series maintains the core premise and themes of the original show, while still evolving into something else that can stand on its own. High Potential may have the same initial premise as HPI, but its versions of those characters have become entirely their own, and its central mystery has since gone in a completely new direction from that of its parent show.

Based on the early description of Rabbit, it looks like the series will find other ways to stand out from Ludwig while still honoring what fans love about the show. Ludwig is also a dramedy with six episodes per season, and it seems likely that Rabbit will follow the model of ABC's other procedurals and get a longer first season. As it stands, it will be exciting to see what changes Rabbit makes from Ludwig when the series ultimately premieres on ABC.

Ludwig is available to stream on BritBox.