All that glitters ain't gold
I'm not sure if you've heard about it, but a few weeks ago a modernized reboot of MacGyver started to air in the US.
I did not go into this with high expectations, as the announcements they made already sounded a bit ... disappointing. But OH BOY have they ruined that concept.
Angus MacGyver and his friend and sidekick Jack Dalton are now working for a superspecial semi-private US Secret agency that in the pilot episode switches names TO "Phoenix Foundation", after they almost got busted and lost a team-member (Mac's girlfriend too), so they had to "rise from the ashes".
"Pete" Thornton is now played by a woman ("Patricia") that seriously believes she's the lovechild of Trinity from the Matrix series and Nick Fury of Marvel fame, only with a grey trenchcoat instead of full on leather garb... and they now use firearms. A lot.
It's not completely horrible in that with any other name and backstory the series would work as something of a "Mission: Impossible Light" with C-movie production values instead of the A-B values of the proper M:I series, but it has about as much to do with the original MacGyver who solved overwhelmingly "civil" problems he stumbled upon by accident as the Miami Vice movie had with the 90es series... I'd compare it with the Knight Rider 2010 reboot, that put the black car into "homeland security" employment, only that that series did successfully switch the campyness of the original with dark and gritty motives without destroying too much of the "a man and his car" theme. With MacGyver it just doesn't work.
Sure they have him DIY some nice gimmicks in every episode, but they feel much more forced and unbelievable than in RDA's time and MacGyver with a series encompassing storyarc of finding a traitor that was behind the pilot-episode bust of their secret organisation isn't really MacGyvery at all.
The crowning moment of ineptitude though was the episode 5, which played in Germany... and they did not manage to get one of the 140,000 unemployed german actors and actresses to play the handful of roles meant to be german people, which ended in the usual bad phonetically learned "pseudo-german" talk. But the worst was... they had it play on a german train going from Berlin to Frankfurt/Main. Overnight / with sleeping cars. And this is what the cars looked like and the locomotive:
I'm underwhelmed... especially as the station pictures they got from ACTUAL Frankfurt featured something a bit more spot on...
But okay, no reason to break out in joy... they also filmed scenes "inside" Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof...
Astonishing this realism.
My personal summary... what a wasted opportunity. The credibility of a private adventurer / entrepreneur going out to do charity work and getting into all kinds of sticky stuff was never as great as today in the age of internet billionaires and other humanitarian hero figures... and they go with "yet another three letter salad" background story making him the only not weapon toting 007 wannabe in a government agency so secret nobody ever heard of it...
Sadly the actors aren't all that bad, at least for a small budget production, I've seen worse, but the scripts are absolute weaponsgrade toxic bullcrap. Another childhood memory forever spoilt.
Damn you Hollywood! Not everything you make today has to be over the top patriotic stupidity.
On a more positive note... while not perfect in every aspect, the new MARS miniseries (afaik 6 episodes, one of which already aired online although TV start is 14th Nov.) isn't that bad. They seemm to have a bit of a problem with the scene buids and costumes, which look a bit cheaply made, but except for a bit of a Elon Musk / Space X fetish they have worked into the fictional background (or 2016 story arc of their split between now and 2033 narrative) it has at least a nice sciency feel and seems to get most things they claim about Mars and a possible / imaginable Mars mission "right"... or right enough to make good TV out of it. I wish the pacing were a bit quicker and they would not jump QUITE as often between the two timeframes, but after only one episode that is not really that judgeable and maybe will get better.
And the also new "Dirk Gently's holistic Detective Agency" series has at least interesting visuals. The story is kind of strange, but then it's a series based on the Doug Adams trilogy (and much of the original novel with the same name was based on Adams work for Dr Who, especially the unfilmed / unfinished story "Shada") which implies strangeness.
At least I like the two protagonists Gently (played by Samuel Barnett, known as Renfield in Penny Dreadful?) and Todd Brotzman (Elijah "Frodo" Wood) and their crazy but likeable interactions. The rest will probably show during the other episodes, right now a lot goes unexplained and ties into stories not yet shown or at least I think so based on the premise that Gently believes everything is somehow connected, even nothing at all... and if you just do anything your case will somehow find to a conclusion. Might be very watchable if only for the confusion and comedy factor.
I did not go into this with high expectations, as the announcements they made already sounded a bit ... disappointing. But OH BOY have they ruined that concept.
Angus MacGyver and his friend and sidekick Jack Dalton are now working for a superspecial semi-private US Secret agency that in the pilot episode switches names TO "Phoenix Foundation", after they almost got busted and lost a team-member (Mac's girlfriend too), so they had to "rise from the ashes".
"Pete" Thornton is now played by a woman ("Patricia") that seriously believes she's the lovechild of Trinity from the Matrix series and Nick Fury of Marvel fame, only with a grey trenchcoat instead of full on leather garb... and they now use firearms. A lot.
It's not completely horrible in that with any other name and backstory the series would work as something of a "Mission: Impossible Light" with C-movie production values instead of the A-B values of the proper M:I series, but it has about as much to do with the original MacGyver who solved overwhelmingly "civil" problems he stumbled upon by accident as the Miami Vice movie had with the 90es series... I'd compare it with the Knight Rider 2010 reboot, that put the black car into "homeland security" employment, only that that series did successfully switch the campyness of the original with dark and gritty motives without destroying too much of the "a man and his car" theme. With MacGyver it just doesn't work.
Sure they have him DIY some nice gimmicks in every episode, but they feel much more forced and unbelievable than in RDA's time and MacGyver with a series encompassing storyarc of finding a traitor that was behind the pilot-episode bust of their secret organisation isn't really MacGyvery at all.
The crowning moment of ineptitude though was the episode 5, which played in Germany... and they did not manage to get one of the 140,000 unemployed german actors and actresses to play the handful of roles meant to be german people, which ended in the usual bad phonetically learned "pseudo-german" talk. But the worst was... they had it play on a german train going from Berlin to Frankfurt/Main. Overnight / with sleeping cars. And this is what the cars looked like and the locomotive:
I'm underwhelmed... especially as the station pictures they got from ACTUAL Frankfurt featured something a bit more spot on...
But okay, no reason to break out in joy... they also filmed scenes "inside" Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof...
Astonishing this realism.
My personal summary... what a wasted opportunity. The credibility of a private adventurer / entrepreneur going out to do charity work and getting into all kinds of sticky stuff was never as great as today in the age of internet billionaires and other humanitarian hero figures... and they go with "yet another three letter salad" background story making him the only not weapon toting 007 wannabe in a government agency so secret nobody ever heard of it...
Sadly the actors aren't all that bad, at least for a small budget production, I've seen worse, but the scripts are absolute weaponsgrade toxic bullcrap. Another childhood memory forever spoilt.
Damn you Hollywood! Not everything you make today has to be over the top patriotic stupidity.
On a more positive note... while not perfect in every aspect, the new MARS miniseries (afaik 6 episodes, one of which already aired online although TV start is 14th Nov.) isn't that bad. They seemm to have a bit of a problem with the scene buids and costumes, which look a bit cheaply made, but except for a bit of a Elon Musk / Space X fetish they have worked into the fictional background (or 2016 story arc of their split between now and 2033 narrative) it has at least a nice sciency feel and seems to get most things they claim about Mars and a possible / imaginable Mars mission "right"... or right enough to make good TV out of it. I wish the pacing were a bit quicker and they would not jump QUITE as often between the two timeframes, but after only one episode that is not really that judgeable and maybe will get better.
And the also new "Dirk Gently's holistic Detective Agency" series has at least interesting visuals. The story is kind of strange, but then it's a series based on the Doug Adams trilogy (and much of the original novel with the same name was based on Adams work for Dr Who, especially the unfilmed / unfinished story "Shada") which implies strangeness.
At least I like the two protagonists Gently (played by Samuel Barnett, known as Renfield in Penny Dreadful?) and Todd Brotzman (Elijah "Frodo" Wood) and their crazy but likeable interactions. The rest will probably show during the other episodes, right now a lot goes unexplained and ties into stories not yet shown or at least I think so based on the premise that Gently believes everything is somehow connected, even nothing at all... and if you just do anything your case will somehow find to a conclusion. Might be very watchable if only for the confusion and comedy factor.