When I first read that they were going to make a reboot of this series from the early 1980s, I was thinking that it might be interesting. I watched the original when it aired on one of the TV station back in the days. Though I might not have seen it regularly, but I remembered the characters quite well and I was fond of them. And I finally got the chance to watch the complete first season which I just finished yesterday. Below are more details of the series.
Brief Intro
An ex Navy Seal Thomas Magnum (Jay Hernandez - Bad Moms, Hostel etc) has gotten the best deal of lifetime when he was hired as security consultant for a successful novel writer Robin Master and could occupy Robin's guesthouse in Hawaii where he could also use other facilities, like the Ferrari. However, he was sometimes interrupted by the Majordomo (caretaker) of Robin's estate named Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks - The Tudors TV series, As Above, So Below etc) with two vicious dogs called Zeus and Apollo.
Magnum also worked as private investigator who took on various clients. He was usually helped by his 2 best friends from army days named Orville "Rick" Wright (Zachary Knighton - Happy Endings TV series etc) who was very well connected with many important people in Hawaii, and a helicopter tour owner Theodore "TC" Calvin (Stephen Hill). Inside Robin's estate, there was also a lady who worked as the curator called Kumu (Amy Hill - The Cat in the Hat etc).
While working on cases, Magnum would sometime be at odds end with Hawaii Police Department detective Katsumoto (Tim Kang - The Mentalist TV series etc) who disliked Magnum's way of solving cases.
End of Brief Intro
Ya, if you read the brief intro I wrote above, you could see that I did not go into the specifics of the story line. That was because the series actually did not really have a major arc story. There was however one or two episodes that were connected with one another, but overall there was no big case that would need multiple seasons to clear. So in each episode, there would be a case that had to be solved by Magnum using various ways including taking advantage of Juliet's ability to find information, Rick's connection and sometimes TC's helicopter to capture the villain.
The main attraction in the series was not the major story arc like in other series, but it was the combination of the charming Magnum (played nicely by Jay Hernandez), his bickering with the strict Juliet and the colorful characters of his friends, plus obviously Magnum's ability to always make Katsumoto irritated. I got to admit that having seen the original series where Tom Selleck played the titular character, the first thing that came to my mind was Jay Hernandez did not look like him at all (no mustache and not as tall as Tom Selleck). But his charm really grew on me. After few episodes, I thought Jay made a nice Thomas Magnum. Plus as the story progressed, there were few small details that made him more convincing like the baseball cap, Hawaiian shirts and that funny brief moment about mustache.
One thing that I was still cautious about was the fact they changed Higgins into female. It seemed like the common practice nowadays to replace certain characters from male into female (as in the reboot of MacGyver), although in this case I was a bit worried. The reason was simple. In the original series, Magnum and Higgins were always bickering but later on respected each other. However, when you got male and female working together for quite long time, there was always going to be chances the writers would make them romantically involved. I would be disappointed if that would be the case, since Magnum and Higgins odd relationship was kind of fun to see and I think it would be ruined by romance.
The rest of the cast were pretty good. The writers did great job by providing a lot of screen time for them and even had one or two episodes where they were greatly involved, which made us feel more attached to them. The cases in the 1st season would usually have some humane thing involved, and there were plenty of action as well. There was also the familiar name of Justin Lin who has directed movies like Fast & Furious 3-6, Star Trek Beyond etc and served as one of the Executive Producer. Aside from him, there were other various familiar names who appeared as guest stars such as Sung Kang, Jordana Brewster, Cyndi Lauper, Ken Jeong, Carl Weathers & many more, even one of the star from the original series.
I think this one would be more appealing for new audience who had not seen the original series. For me personally, this is a fun and light series that I quite enjoyed. It had certain episodes that I was really entertained, with my personal favorites, episodes 12 and 17. However, I was not satisfied with the season finale which I thought was a bit too rushed. Maybe they should have made it into two parts finale so the story would be better told. Since there was no major story arc, there was no cliffhanger ending which made me anxious to wait for second season. Oh one fun fact, as this series was set in Hawaii, there was a crossover with 2010 Hawaii Five-0 series (which happened to be a reboot of 1960s famous series) in the form of certain characters appearing in both series.
So if you are interested in watching a Private Detective series set in the beautiful Hawaii with lovely sceneries and you want to see cases being solved in the method mentioned above, you are welcome to give this a try. If you are fans of the original series, it might be good to give this a chance, though if you are really hard core fans, there is possibility you might not enjoy it. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Thanks for sharing,.
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