Another “Bromantic” TV Dud?

It’s an understatement to say that Hank Stuever, TV critic for The Washington Post, isn’t impressed with the rebooted Magnum P.I. series set to debut tonight on CBS. As he writes,

Despite the calibrated charm of your star, Jay Hernandez (who casually assumes Tom Selleck’s defining role, knowing full well that a hint of a stubbly goatee is no match for the ’stache), your pilot episode is an uninspired slop of cornball action and opening misfires. You are strewn with too many characters (that original sense of camaraderie now gives off a smarmy whiff of the bromantic) and preoccupied with checking off a long to-do list. Things are made worse by Hernandez’s ceaseless voice-over narration, which fails to explain much.

You are not good at the thing you’re trying to be, New Magnum, and instead of resurrecting a feeling, you’ve run right over it with that bright red Ferrari. Instead of declaring a creative or timely purpose (like your network friend and fellow exhumee, “Murphy Brown”), you are merely a piece of content placed between commercials. Your existence is cold and cynical, Magnum, predicated on the previous success of reboots such as “Hawaii Five-O” and “MacGyver.”

Well, that’s too bad. I wasn’t a big watcher of Tom Selleck’s original Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988), but I was at least willing to give Hernandez’s new version of the show a shot, if only because I like on-screen car chases every now and then, and I was amused by the notion of proper Englishman Jonathan Higgins III (John Hillerman) being re-imagined as ass-kicking former MI6 agent Juliet Higgins (played by Perdita Weeks, oh so recognizably the younger sister of Foyle’s War co-star Honeysuckle Weeks). However, the Magnum trailer—posted here—definitely has that too-cute, action-above-all-else vibe I dislike so much in the current Hawaii Five-O incarnation.

It seems that at the same time as it lost the comma from its title, this new Magnum P.I. also lost its heart and any purpose for its existence other than to make CBS lots and lots of money. Will America’s broadcast TV networks ever stop trying to breathe new life into once-popular shows, and instead come up with a few new ideas? No wonder people are turning to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime for more of their small-screen entertainment.

READ MORE: “TV’s New Shows This Fall, From Binge to Cringe,” by Matthew Gilbert (The Boston Globe); “Magnum P.I. (2018),” by Scott D. Parker (Scott D. Parker: Storyteller) ; “There Is No Fall TV Season Anymore,” by Todd VanDerWerff (Vox).