When good TV goes bad: how MacGyver blew the bloody doors off
Look back at the 1980s and the gun always shines on TV. Tom Selleck’s Magnum packed a Colt 45, the A-Team cheerfully hefted M16 assault rifles, and supposed stealth copter Airwolf bristled with chattering chainguns. But amid this trigger-happy cloud of cordite there was also a chill dude with a luxurious mullet and battered leather jacket who, despite being a freelance troubleshooter, would point-blank refuse to pick up a firearm.
Being militantly anti-gun was the immovable cornerstone to the otherwise laidback philosophy of MacGyver, a tireless white knight played with down-home charm by Richard Dean Anderson. Whatever the crisis, he would doggedly pursue a solution that didn’t require a revolver, preferring to apply obscure science knowhow to a grab-bag of nearby junk. Mac worked bomb-defusing wonders with paperclips, cobbled together a hang glider out of a crashed satellite, and even fashioned a defibrillator from two candlesticks and a mic cord.
Here was a rare glossy action series that championed intelligence and ingenuity over violence. Revisit it now and you might be reminded of the great Quantum Leap – another earnest, voiceover-heavy drama with a science whiz at its centre. Plus, you can detect the spirit of MacGyver’s on-the-fly gadget-building in more recent shows such as ITV2 staple Scorpion, spycraft primer Burn Notice and even Breaking Bad. Everyone’s a maker these days, and Mac is their patron saint.
For such a breezy enterprise, MacGyver has left a surprisingly deep impression on pop culture, not least because Anderson has long been lusted over by Marge Simpson’s perma-puffing sisters Selma and Patty. During its seven-season run, there were entertaining highs but also plenty of lows – perhaps inevitable when you are required to churn out 22 episodes a year. As the series progressed, things would occasionally get weirdly metaphysical, such as the season five finale, in which a comatose Mac reunites with his late parents as they board a boat nominally bound for heaven.
For UK viewers, though, MacGyver unfortunately jumped the shark early doors. The third episode of season one is a classic spy tale set in Budapest, with Mac attempting to retrieve valuable microfilm. After getting chucked into a prison labour camp, he escapes using dynamite cooked up from salt, sugar and weed killer. Then he messes up Budapest’s (apparently very basic) traffic light system using a credit card. Mac’s plan is to escape to Austria using a transcontinental rally as cover. So he and his allies pull on jumpsuits and clamber into red, white and blue Mini Coopers. It seems like a nice nod to a certain classic movie, albeit one perhaps not familiar to US audiences. Then it cuts to actual footage from The Italian Job itself: the hiding-in-the-car-park gag, the Fiat factory roof track chase, the escape by water pipe, the lot.
It is an audacious gambit, and one that you could argue chimes with the MacGyver credo of bodging together something new from old stuff lying around. The problem is that carving up such a beloved film feels cheap, lazy and disrespectful, and casts a pall over the whole shooting match. But perhaps it’s no wonder MacGyver was so adept at jumping the shark – the series was executive produced by Fonzie himself, Henry Winkler.