Lockdown, Lowdown… Ringside Report Looks Back at Hawaii 5-0 – The Remake

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Scottish kids call the police, the po-po or the 5-0. It shows the influence of American culture on our culture that the USA had. Most of the kids have never watched the Wire or Hawaii Five-0. Most never knew that there were two versions of 5-0. But hey, that’s kids for ya!

In and around several other remakes, this 5-0 made its debut over a decade ago – in 2010. It was a time when some of us felt there might be a crisis within the American television industry where they could not come up with original ideas and had to reboot classics to make ends meet. The reality was that increasing scheduling time demanded new product and what could be more likely to be a hit than something which had been a hit before?

Leonard Freeman’s classic was therefore reinvented by Peter M Lenkov, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci for the 21st Century.

What it also gave us was one heck of a diverse cast. Running for 10 seasons over 240 episodes, it kept to the American 24 or so-episode series length structurally which gave us a great grounding in the back stories of each character and their arcs. It was a CBS production which we in the UK got through Sky.

We were already familiar with the premise that 5-0 were a specialist task force, with immunity and unlimited means, setup and only answerable to the Governor of Hawaii. The task force is headed by US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett, played by Alex O’Loughlin. McGarrett brings in, as his partner and constant cop buddy, a Detective Sergeant in the Honolulu Police Department, Danny, “Danno” Williams, played by Scot Caan. He then recruits a former HPD Detective Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly, played by Daniel Dae Kim, and a rookie HPD Officer, Kono Kalakaua, played by Grace Park. As is usual in police procedurals, we also have a singular coroner, Dr. Max Bergman, played by Masi Oka.

Cast changes did happen as time progressed and by the end of season seven both Daniel Dae Kim and Kono Kalakaua left as they were being offered significantly less financially than their colleagues – I may presume that diversity did not transcend to the dollar! Oka also reduced his role considerably though the role of medical examiner was then taken by Dr. Noelani Cunha played by Kimee Balmilero. The 5-0 universe was complimented by a number of other characters including Captain Lou Grover a former SWAT leader played by Chi McBride, a conspiracy theorist, Jerry Ortega, played by Jorge Garcia who starts as a man to be cautious of and then moves into their basement as a key member of their team. Kim and Kalakaua’s departures saw Officer Tani Ray played by Meaghan Rath and Officer Junior Reigns played by Beulah Koale replace them. The 5-0 universe was completed by McGarret’s girlfriend Lieutenant Catherine Rollins played by Michelle Borth, with whom, eventually McGarrett is seen leaving Hawaii at the end of series ten. There are further characters to keep things fresh including the effervescent and magnificently entrepreneurial Kamekona Tupuola played by Taylor Wily, Sergeant Duke Lukela played by Dennis Chun with whom much liaison is done and Adam Noshimuri, former crime boss, and husband of Kono Kalakaua played by Ian Anthony Dale. Noshimuri has a narrative arc where he tries to get away from his family’s links with the Triads.

Given that it shared a stable with NCIS and other Lenkov productions there were crossover episodes with Magnum, MacGyver and NCIS Los Angeles.

Eventually production halted after Caan, who found the shooting schedule quite a challenge and was spending increasing time at home and O’Loughlin was finding the stunts too much for his body to take led to the series coming to a planned end.

What worked for me was the way in which the series had backstory and several character arcs that motored it. It began with the fact that McGarrett was following in his father’s footsteps, he then went on to help Danno avenge his brother’s death, help Kono who ended up helping young girls out of a life she could have found herself in, and the ongoing comedy of the Kamekona Shrimp Empire. There was also the constant bromance between Danno and McGarrett, the love life of both of them which almost escaped cliches and the wider character set, but, for me it was the shrimp truck and the conspiracy nut which were the greatest of light relief.

I was really sorry to see it go but it finished properly with characters given their send offs. What I didn’t know was that McGarrett’s car, which was a vintage piece of work, had been in the original series, so it was a reboot with some vintage credibility. The show certainly also delivered for the Hawaiian economy and was loved by the residents of that beautiful part of the world.

In a remake you have the issue of trying to recreate something people already have a view about, and the producers took that on and brought some flair to the new version. It was never a certainty that it would work but the slew of awards nominations it gathered is testimony to their success. But despite that, there were plenty of questions left hanging and it would always be an open door through which somebody in the future may well want to make another remake…

British television is a curious affair. Begun through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) it is funded through the universal license fee. In essence, if you wanted to watch the television, you had to pay the license fee. The BBC got it all and is state run, albeit at arms-length. Then came along commercial television in the form of the Independent Television (ITV) in 1955. Designed to bring a bit of competition to the BBC, it was paid for through advertising but still free to air… well they didn’t add another license fee to it. By the time that I was born, 1965, there was BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. And that was it. It was still years before Bruce Springsteen would moan that there were 55 channels and nothing on but here in the UK, we kept this going until in 1982, we added a fourth channel and in 1997, a fifth. With sparkling imagination, they were called Channel Four and ehm Channel Five… In between came Sky and we understood what Springsteen meant. And so, my childhood and leading up to early adulthood we had three options… But the programs made were exceptionally good. And so, here is some critical nostalgia as the lockdown has brought a plethora of reruns, new formats and platforms and old classics trying to make their way back into our consciousness as broadcasters flood their schedules with classics… or are they classics at all? Let me take you through an armchair critics’ view of what we have to see, to find out… Welcome to the Lockdown Lowdown…