NEW YORK, Sept 21 — It’s chemistry versus cleverness in this week’s battle of the 1980s reboots. And the winner is — well, neither of them is mandatory viewing, but if you have to watch one, go with chemistry.
That would be Lethal Weapon, an action-movie franchise that Fox has turned into a TV series and will introduce tonight. Perhaps you remember the original movie, from 1987: Mel Gibson, back when he was fun, was a suicidal police officer paired with his polar opposite, Murtaugh, played by Danny Glover.
It’s a conceit that requires the two actors to click in a particular way, humorously but leaving room for high action and occasionally sombre moments. Gibson and Glover managed it pretty well, though they ultimately fell victim to too-many-sequels-itis. In the TV show this falls to Damon Wayans as Murtaugh and Clayne Crawford as Riggs. Their chemistry isn’t instantaneous, but by the end of the premiere you can at least see potential.
Wayans, a familiar face from In Living Colour and other shows, brings a built-in likability to Murtaugh, who as the series opens is just returning to duty in the Los Angeles Police Department after heart surgery and is understandably averse to high-adrenaline assignments. Crawford (Rectify) draws the harder assignment as Riggs, who has just transferred to the department after a horrific personal loss back in Texas that has left him not caring whether he lives or dies.
The chemistry may develop, but whether the writing will keep pace is unclear from the premiere, which involves an apparent suicide that may not be a suicide at all. A good gauge of how quickly a crime show will run out of ideas is how early it resorts to the tired old “but he was left-handed!” eureka moment to crack a case. Here, that coin is spent in the first half-hour of the first episode. Hmmm.
If Lethal Weapon at least has potential, it’s hard to say the same for MacGyver, another reboot of a 1980s property that arrives Friday on CBS. It’s a version of the TV series that ran for seven seasons on ABC beginning in 1985. It follows the exploits of Angus MacGyver, a clandestine operative who battles malfeasance by jury-rigging solutions to dire problems.
Richard Dean Anderson carried the original series with charm and moxie. Lucas Till, as the 2016 version of the title character, doesn’t make much of an impression in the premiere, which involves a bioweapon that has fallen into bad hands. It’s nice to see George Eads of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation back on TV as Jack Dalton, one of MacGyver’s partners in disaster prevention, but the show is bogged down by its premise.
Somehow battling baddies with “little more than bubble gum and a paper clip,” as the show’s website says, seems out of phase in the digital age. The 1980s were still within shouting distance of the era when people were expected to change their own oil and fix their own lawn mowers. Today, far fewer can or would want to. Watching MacGyver try to gadget his way out of a predicament just makes you think, “Isn’t there an app for that?” — The New York Times
