Magnum PI: The Remake

Today, I wanted to talk briefly about a couple of TV shows that have made me feel pretty happy the past couple of weeks.

First, we are loving the new season of Doctor Who, particularly Jodie Whitaker as the new Doctor. I’ve been a huge fan of Doctor Who since I was a kid, but in recent years, my enthusiasm had waned a bit. With this new season, though, I feel completely reenergized. Jodie Whitaker brings a similar kind of energy and enthusiasm to the part that I loved in David Tennant, and Peter Davison, and Christopher Eccleston. With just two episodes broadcast, she is completely and totally the Doctor in my mind. 

The other day, despite having been almost completely turned off by the trailers, I decided to watch the first episode of the remade Magnum P.I. As a kid, I avidly watched the last 3 or 4 seasons of the original show (followed by Simon & Simon), and I HATED the idea that it was being remade by the producers who—to my mind—got the remake of MacGyver so wrong. The previews showcased big, explodey car crashes, making it look more like The Fast & the Furious (F&F director Justin Lin directed the new Magnum pilot) than the Magnum I knew. And it looked like they had just cast a typical Hollywood pretty boy as Magnum, and really, who could replace Tom Selleck, anyway? 

But, I loved the original so much, I felt compelled to check out the new one. I mean, what if it wasn’t awful? And who was I to judge without watching at least one episode?

Turns out, I really enjoyed it. And nobody is more surprised at that than me.

The pilot starts out with one of the over-the-top action sequences from the trailer. But, it turns out that it is intentionally over the top, because it’s actually a sequence from one of bestselling author Robin Masters’ novels. The other “big” action sequence from the trailer happens towards the end. It literally lasts maybe 10 seconds, the entire thing was in the trailer, and it’s over-the-topness is a direct response to the book sequence at the beginning. And those are the only bits like that in the episode, although the trailer made it seem as if that was the tone of the whole piece.

Instead, I found the tone of the episode to be exactly what I remembered from the original series. In fact, I felt like the episode could have been filmed with the original cast back in the 80s without any changes. To me, the strength of this remake is that except for the new cast—including gender-swapping Higgins—and updating the characters’ backstories so that they were POWs in Afghanistan and not Vietnam, and giving them cell phones, nothing really seems to have been changed. I don’t mean that the show feels old-fashioned or retro, but that the format of the original is durable enough to survive being remade without major alterations.

The show is developed and produced by Peter Lenkov, who is also in charge of the Hawaii 5-0 and MacGyver remakes. I first got to know his work on the RIPD comic from Dark Horse (so much better than the movie that was loosely adapted from it) and on La Femme Nikita on USA. I watched the first season of Hawaii 5-0 and enjoyed it just fine. I stopped watching it because I was too busy, not because it was bad, but I never watched the original, so I can’t compare them.

On the other hand, I was a big MacGyver fan, and really felt disappointed in the remake. In giving MacGyver a team of experts to work with, including a guy whose role was to be the strong guy with a gun, I felt like they completely missed the point of the original. MacGyver was a guy who didn’t need anybody else, and who could take care of himself in much more clever ways than punching or shooting people. Plus, they layered on a overarching conspiracy storyline, because I guess everything needs a story arc in television today. And, on top of that, they didn’t even use a version of the original theme, which is a great theme tune.

In contrast, Magnum has kept the characters exactly the same. I also believe that the characters are adults, as much as they joke around with each other. On top of that, I believe that they are friends and respect one another. Magnum and Higgins have the same prickly relationship they did in the original, but you believe that there is some genuine kindness beneath all that. And they kept the theme tune.

A big factor is that Jay Hernandez isn’t playing Magnum the way Tom Selleck did, but he is playing the same character that Selleck played, just his way. Hernandez’s Magnum has the same charm, the same sense of humor, and the same sense of honor and compassion that made the character so compelling. He is the Thomas Magnum that I grew up with, only looking and sounding different. He’s an extremely likable character, which is what you need in the lead for a TV show like this. And my wife thinks he’s really cute, too.

Four episodes in, and while the show has been dropping hints about a former relationship of Magnum’s, we otherwise haven’t seen any sort of overarching conspiracy or connecting storyline. Each episode has featured a self contained case, and they’ve been pretty fun. The first episode was a murder mystery, but the second started off with Magnum hired to find a $350,000 tuna. 

My wife and I groaned and got a little nervous when last Monday’s episode introduced a “Magnum framed for a crime he didn’t commit” element. We hate it when TV shows try to tease us with shocking twists we know aren’t going to actually last. “Has the Flash lost his super-speed for ever?” No. “Will Archie be sentenced to prison for a crime he didn’t commit?” Probably not. “Have Castle and Becket been separated for good?” No, and that’s enough to get me to stop watching your show. Fortunately, the Magnum episode was able to get away with it by quickly demonstrating that nobody on the show, including the police, were really buying it.

My wife and I were big fans of shows on the USA network like Psych, White Collar, In Plain Sight, and Royal Pains. When the last of those, Royal Pains, ended, I actually got pretty upset as the credits rolled on the final episode. My wife asked what was wrong. “Where am I going to find another show about good people just trying to do good things for people?” I asked. With Magnum P.I., we may have finally found a replacement. In one episode, Higgins asks Magnum why he does what he does, since he so often doesn’t charge clients for his help. He tells her that when he was a sailor, he felt good helping people, and when he left the Navy, he wanted to keep on doing that. That’s what I want to see in a television hero.

I learned yesterday that CBS has picked up Magnum P.I. for a full season, which makes me happy. Here’s hoping it finds the audience it deserves because, speaking as a fan of the original, I think it’s pretty neat.