To keep interest levels high, most procedural drama series (read Blue Bloods, Castle and Criminal Minds), have a good mix of both character building and mystery. Another such example is the Golden Globe nominated Hawaii Five-0, which premiered on BiG CBS last week. A reboot of the Primetime award-winning original 70’s series of the same name, it revolves around Steve McGarrett played by Alex o’Loughlin (remember Stan from The Back Up Plan) who returns to Hawaii to find his father’s killer and gets a chance to run his own task force (Five-o). The Australian actor shares his fascination for the show and why the island itself plays a character:
When the writers offered me the role, I said, ‘Look, the thing I don’t want to do is end up on a straight procedural. I don’t want to do that sort of TV.’ Because we’re saturated with it.
The island plays the fifth character in the show. It’s small and we can shoot as much of it as we want. it’s kind of easy to get around and stuff. There are some challenges, like the speed limit is 25. I prefer working in films. on television... you get there and the cameras are rolling and they say, ‘There’s a problem in the scene, we have to sort it out.’ You’ve got like 20 minutes on a TV set to do that. Whereas in a film you can devote the entire day to that scene. So, I think the hardest thing in television is to maintain truth and integrity in the work.
The original was a great show, but it’s old television. It’s not my generation. Not just the show itself, but television in that time – it was a very different animal. Things were very stylised and postured. Now not only is the acting style different but the technology allows us to do so much more.
Hawaii Five-0 airs weekdays at 9 pm on Big CBS Prime