TV Talk: NBC revives CBS’s canceled ‘Magnum P.I.’ reboot

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

PASADENA, Calif. — Not every canceled series gets a second chance, but when CBS axed “Magnum P.I.” in May after four seasons, production company NBCUniversal looked to reverse the show’s misfortune.

“The effort to find a home for the show started, honestly, within minutes of us getting word that we weren’t going to be back on CBS,” said executive producer Eric Guggenheim during January’s Television Critics Association winter 2023 press tour. “I was on the phone with John Davis, one of our (executive producers), and John was like, ‘Don’t take another job. Don’t sign another deal. Let’s find a home for this.’ ”

A four- to six-week period followed as NBC worked to figure out the economics of reviving the show, which has its two-episode season premiere from 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock.

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up because it’s such a rare thing for this to happen,” Guggenheim said. “NBC has been phenomenal. The transition there felt, in a lot of ways, just very seamless.”

Star Jay Hernandez, who plays Thomas Magnum, said the whole experience has been full of unexpected twists.

“It was a shock that the show was going to go away in the first place,” he said. “I was surprised that it found another home. … Just seeing the amount of support that the show was getting from the audience, from fans, that was humbling to me. I kind of put my head down, we do our work, and sometimes you forget about the people and the impact that the show has.”

NBC ordered a 20-episode fifth season that will be aired in two 10-episode batches.

Guggenheim said the biggest change for the new season would likely have happened had the show returned on CBS: Magnum and Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks) are now a couple.

“I think if you had asked us way back when we were doing the pilot when they would get together, we probably would have said maybe by the end of season five. The chemistry between these two actors is just amazing, and it was becoming harder and harder, honestly, to keep them apart,” Guggenheim said. “I remember saying to the writers (on) day one of season four, ‘Is this the year we get them together?’ And that started a dialogue of us trying to figure out what are the pros and cons of getting them together? If we were to get them together, what does that look like? And the more we talked about it, the more excited we got about putting them together.”

Weeks said she heard from fans who were concerned that if Magnum and Higgins became a romantic couple “it would lose something, the antagonism or something, but I will reassure everyone that that very much remains.”

“Yeah, we still bicker constantly,” Hernandez added.

“Magnum” also got a little sexier with more beach scenes and less clothing.

“Ramped it up a notch,” Weeks said.

“I think it’s more romantic,” Guggenheim said. “I think that would have happened, regardless, once we put them together. It’s more emotional, I feel.”

Weeks said the new season doesn’t shy away from grappling with Magnum and Higgins in a relationship.

“With two people who are obviously meant for each other, but then having to navigate working together, being in dangerous situations, I think people are really going to enjoy it,” she said.

“When we’re in dangerous situations, the dynamic shifts a little bit when it’s somebody that you’re in a relationship with, you know?” Hernandez said. “Sometimes I look at the scenes, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I’d let you do that,’ ‘You got to stay home,’ or something like that. I just want to protect you.”

“Nice try,” Weeks said. “That’s not going to happen, though.”

“She doesn’t need protection,” Hernandez conceded, “but I have that impulse.”