Obviously there’s no need to remake the iconic 1980s crime drama Magnum, P.I., but because it’s impossible to avoid franchise revivals in 2018, CBS was smart to hand the reins to the new series to producer Peter M. Lenkov, who’s also responsible for the network’s updates of Hawaii Five-0 and MacGyver. He knows how to deliver a slick, easy-to-watch take on an action-adventure classic, with just enough modern updates for a traditional audience.

Directed by filmmaker Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious, Star Trek Beyond), the pilot for Magnum P.I. (this version drops the comma from the title) has plenty of bombastic, over-the-top action, some entertaining banter and a lively pace that makes it easy not to stop and think about how ridiculous it all is. The episode opens to the strains of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” as Thomas Magnum (Jay Hernandez) prepares to make a parachute jump from the stratosphere into North Korea. Once he lands, he has to shoot his way past North Korean soldiers to smuggle a defector out of the country, aided by his trusty support team.

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Cut to: Magnum and his ex-military buddies making fun of the absurdity of the action, which actually comes from a bestselling novel by author Robin Masters, a former journalist embedded with Magnum and his unit in Iraq. As much as Magnum and his right-hand men Theodore “T.C.” Calvin (Stephen Hill) and Orville “Rick” Wright (Zachary Knighton) mock their supposedly exaggerated portrayal in Masters’ novels, their actual adventures as depicted on the show aren’t much more grounded.

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Of course, realism isn’t exactly what anyone’s looking for in a show about a private investigator who lives on a sprawling estate in Hawaii and spends as much time on the beach as he does solving crimes. As in the original series, Magnum is the head of security for the unseen Masters, living in a guest house at the author's compound in exchange for unspecified services. Hernandez's Magnum also retains a love-hate relationship with the other person living on the estate, Masters’ majordomo, a somewhat-uptight Brit. Lenkov has flipped that character’s gender, so that she’s now Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks), a former MI-6 agent who has clear sexual tension with Magnum from their first scene together.

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The first episode, which is the only one CBS made available for review, even takes direct inspiration from one of the most famous episodes of the original series, the two-part Season 3 premiere “Did You See the Sunrise?” (the new version is titled “I Saw the Sun Rise”). The Wire’s Domenick Lombardozzi plays the fourth member of Magnum’s former team, Sebastian Nuzo, who’s caught up in some bad business related to disgraced ex-Marines smuggling gold out of Iraq. Poor Lombardozzi ends up as an expendable plot device, but even before Nuzo exits the story, he fits in well with the group’s camaraderie.

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That charm and chemistry is a big part of what makes the show work, and Hernandez does a good job of filling the shoes of Tom Selleck without coming off as a carbon copy. He’s a bit more somber and introspective, while retaining the roguish quality that made Selleck so appealing. Hill and Knighton exist mostly as supportive sounding boards in this episode, but the flashbacks to the group’s military service should provide plenty of fodder for character development. Weeks plays a much larger role as Higgins, both as an active participant in Magnum’s investigation (she holds her own in a brawl with a couple of the ex-Marines) and as a friend he can rely on emotionally. Weeks brings just the right balance of cheekiness and compassion to the role, and it’s easy to imagine her developing a will-they/won’t-they relationship with Magnum.

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The Hawaii setting and Lenkov’s involvement also mean the show gets to become part of a burgeoning TV universe along the lines of Dick Wolf’s Chicago series. Kimee Balmilero has an extended cameo as her Hawaii Five-0 character, medical examiner Noelani Cunha, who’s established as someone Magnum has worked with many times before, and his antagonistic contact on the local police force mentions “Five-0” as the department that should be handling Nuzo’s case. It’s another fun throwback to the original series, which crossed over with such shows as Simon & Simon and Murder, She Wrote.

There’s a limit to how far nostalgia and upbeat energy will take the series, of course, and Lin won’t be around on future episodes to stage exciting (and expensive) action sequences like the truck/car/helicopter chase at the climax of the pilot. As much as seeing Magnum drive a vintage Ferrari right out of the original series (because the current-model Ferrari got trashed in a gun battle, of course) can evoke a knowing smile, there has to be more going on if the show is going to succeed in the long term. Then again, Magnum trashes the vintage Ferrari by the end of the episode, too, so the future is still wide open.


Premiering Monday, Sept. 24, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS, Magnum P.I. stars Jay Hernandez, Perdita Weeks, Zachary Knighton, Stephen Hill and Tim Kang.