In the 1980s, ‘MacGyver‘ could solve any problem with ‘Blue Peter‘ improvisation. The new version of the show may have high ratings but is it coasting on nostalgia?
Infiltrating a gathering of the powerful and rich, Angus MacGyver’s mission is to find a box containing a secret weapon and make sure he removes it from said premises before it can be sold to the highest bidder. With the aid of cellotape, scissors, trays and a Swiss-army knife, even the most intimidating obstacles prove no match for the ex-bomb disposal expert with a mind built to excel at improvising. But the mission goes south and MacGyver and his team Jack Dalton (George Eads) and Nikki (Tracy Spiridakos) face themselves facing a mortal loss as they face down hard-man John Kendrick.
Three months later and the same biological device looks set to be used – and the team must recruit hacker Riley Davis (Tristin Mays) to help track Kendrick and a surprise enemy…
Thomas Edison said that ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration …’ and the makers of the new MacGyver are certainly hoping that’s a maxim viewers can live with.
In the 1980s, audiences thrilled to what Richard Dean Anderson (later of Stargate SG1) could do with a paper-clip, a stick and some sticky-backed plastic… a hero who preferred improvising solutions to firing guns unless he had to. As the eleventh commandment of current television schedules seems to be that thou shalt mine all the seams you can find until the well is dry (or some other mixed metaphor), a modern update of the show was perhaps inevitable. The result? At least tonally, you could be forgiven for thinking the people behind it had binge-watched Steven Moffat and Matt Smith’s era of Doctor Who and decided all it was missing was more explosions and gunfire. ‘Voila’ and ‘Geronimo’…. James Bond Jnr.
Early word had people despairing over the ‘Young MacGyver’ remit of the project. In and of himself, Lucas Till proves to be perfectly adequate in the role, as a somewhat vanilla action-hero that never has to worry about the weight of the script, one that’s 50% homage to the original show and 50% blueprinted to appeal as a Young Adult novel hero.
George Eads is probably best known for his CSI tenure and here gets to launch himself into the toy-box of action-hero back-up, a sharp-shooter full of never-ending clips and quips and as much there for playful banter as military back-up.
Elsewhere the supporting cast go through the motions but never threaten to break cover.
Vinnie Jones turns up for what must have been all of a morning shift and collects a nice pay-check for doing scenes that largely waste his screen presence. The actor may not be appearing in any Shakespeare plays any time soon, but he knows how to employ his hard-man image to good effect. Here he merely snarls and threatens for a few minutes of screen-time and is far from the imposing figure he’s first portrayed to be.
Sandrine Holt is the team’s gruff but caring boss ™, Tristin Mays is the hacker with the heart of gold ® and Justin Hires, (late of another reboot, Rush Hour) is, somewhat thanklessly reduced to a cameo in the pilot playing MacGyver’s room-mate, oblivious to his friend’s true occupation as only a script necessity can dictate.
Ironically it’s not the innate hokeyness that trips up proceedings – the schedules have long since proven that a familiar template is no obstacle to prime-time fun. Instead – and somewhat surprisingly – it’s two other things..
Firstly there’s a real clash of tone. The early, earthy flirtations aside – put there to add unnecessary ‘colour’ – don’t work alongside a larger percentage of the show that feels much more geared to a family outing. Those percentages mentioned above aside, it’s a pilot that shows all the signs of being reworked (which, indeed, it was) and the result is uneven (though it’s not clear where the actual differences or additions were made). It’s ultimately inoffensive, if somewhat bland and retrograde, but the speed of plot and the logic therein seem deliberately designed to keep things simple and two-dimensional.
Secondly, the pilot’s special-effects are diabolically weak. When a truck blows up near episode’s end it does so less than convincingly – debris flying like… well, faulty pixels. Truthfully, elements like those explosions look like the kind of thing that could be conjured up by a cut-price app to supplement your cell-phone footage and there are examples of green-screen work that would have looked creaky in the original show. It’s strange how this is a main issue, given that one would expect the visual-effects to be the traditional hub of an action show.
The new take on MacGyver isn’t awful, it’s just… meh-Gyver, a nostalgic doff of the mullet to a classic but a show out of time in so many other respects. It goes for the samey, big action, Bondian, set-up rather than the more intricate elements that could have showcased its differences. As undemanding fun on a night when half the audience is out, it may just find a way to stick. Perhaps audiences want this kind of popcorn simplicity as an antidote to the darker hues that other shows are pivoting. But will all those strings and glue contraptions really save a show that might have been far better to have pitched at the Disney Channel rather than network prime-time?
6/10
