CBS cancelled MacGyver in April 2021. The reboot, developed by Peter M. Lenkov, ran five seasons and 94 episodes, from September 23, 2016 to April 30, 2021. Lucas Till stars as Angus “Mac” MacGyver, a U.S. government agent who fights with engineering rather than lethal force. It is a reboot of the 1985–1992 series created by Lee David Zlotoff.
A Think Tank With a Secret
The premise is the pitch. Mac works for the Phoenix Foundation, a secret, privately funded U.S. government intelligence agency cloaked as a think tank. He has an extraordinary talent for problem solving and an extensive knowledge of science, and he uses both to save lives and, in some cases, prevent catastrophes. The show’s own description puts it plainly: “With skills that are only limited by his creativity, Mac saves the day using paper clips instead of pistols, birthday candles instead of bombs, and gum instead of guns.”
Till Does the Voice-Over
Till plays the title character and narrates him. Episodes make frequent use of second-person narrative in the form of voice-overs provided by Till as Angus MacGyver. The commentary usually gives instructions or “tricks of the trade,” as if for a training or orientation film.
That is the show’s smartest formal choice. The voice-over turns exposition into instruction and lets the series explain its own science without stopping the scene. When the trick is good, the narration is the payoff. When the trick is thin, the narration is a confession.
Riley and Bozer
Tristin Mays plays Riley Davis, a highly unpredictable computer hacker with a chip on her shoulder. Justin Hires plays Wilt Bozer, Mac’s roommate and an aspiring filmmaker. Meredith Eaton plays Matty Webber. Henry Ian Cusick plays Russ Taylor.
Riley and Bozer carry the most weight of the supporting cast. Riley gives the team a second skill set that is not engineering, which matters in a show where the lead can fix anything mechanical but not everything digital. Bozer gives Mac a life outside the Phoenix Foundation. A procedural needs someone for whom the job is not the whole world.
The Pilot CBS Threw Away
The show’s first version did not survive. In March 2016, Till was announced as the new MacGyver, Joshua Boone as Gunner, MacGyver’s best friend from high school, and George Eads as Jack Dalton, originally named Lincoln. Addison Timlin was cast as Mickey, an app developer who is aggressively progressive in her political views but who has a soft spot for MacGyver. Michelle Krusiec was cast as Agent Croix, Dalton’s sister, who works for the Department of Homeland Security.
CBS scrapped that pilot in June 2016 and ordered a new one. Only Till and Eads carried over. Around the same time, Hires was cast as Bozer. In July 2016, Variety reported Sandrine Holt as Patricia Thornton, an ex-field agent who was director of operations for the Department of External Services, and Mays as Riley.
That is a lot of rebuilding before a single episode aired. The discarded version sounds like a different series. The one that survived knows what it is.
Hawaii Five-0 Shares the Universe
MacGyver takes place in the same fictional universe as two other series, both also developed by Lenkov and both reboots of earlier shows: Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I. The three have been collectively referred to as the “Lenkov-verse.”
That shared universe is not a gimmick here so much as a business plan, and it worked. Lenkov had a template: take a familiar title, keep the name recognition, update the cast, let the shows cross over. MacGyver fits it exactly. It also explains why the show feels built for a schedule rather than for a finale. This is television made to keep running, not to end well, and it kept running for five seasons.
Eads Leaves Midway Through Season Three
On November 26, 2018, it was announced that Eads was set to depart the series midway through the third season. According to Lenkov, Eads had asked to be released from his contract for some time so he could spend more time with his young daughter.
Losing Jack Dalton is the show’s real turning point. Dalton was Mac’s partner and the emotional counterweight to a lead who is better with objects than with people. The series replaced him rather than wrote around him, and the later seasons are competent but different. That is not a knock on the actors who came in. It is what happens when a two-hander becomes an ensemble.
Lenkov and Wan said in July 2016 that they wanted to cast Richard Dean Anderson, the original MacGyver actor, into the new show. “We’re all MacGyver fanatics so we’re hoping to get him on the show and have him be on this incarnation,” they said. The source does not say whether that happened, and this review will not pretend to know.
What the Reboot Gets Right
The reboot understands that the original’s appeal was never violence. It was competence. MacGyver is a show about a man who is very good at his job and enjoys it, and Till plays that without smugness. The Phoenix Foundation setup — a private intelligence agency hidden inside a think tank — gives the show a reason to exist in a world where government agencies are already everywhere on television.
The action is clean. The science is explained. And the show never asks the audience to take it too seriously, which is the correct posture for a series about gum instead of guns.
The weakness is consistency. A show built on one clever solution per week lives and dies on the quality of that solution, and 94 episodes is a long time to keep inventing. Some weeks the paper clip is inspired. Some weeks it is a paper clip.
The Score
MacGyver is a good network action series that was never going to be a great one, and it knew that. It ran five seasons, survived a scrapped pilot and a major cast departure, and stayed watchable throughout. The second-person narration is the best idea in it, and the Riley and Bozer additions are the reason it lasted.
The score is 7.3 of 10. That is the right number for a show that does one thing well and does it 94 times. It is not a classic. It is a reliable hour of television, and reliability is harder to make than it looks.
Key numbers
- Title: MacGyver (2016)
- Created by: Peter M. Lenkov
- Network: CBS
- First aired: September 23, 2016
- Last aired: April 30, 2021
- Seasons: 5
- Episodes: 94
- Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure
- Starring: Lucas Till, Tristin Mays, Henry Ian Cusick, Meredith Eaton, Justin Hires, Levy Tran
- Score: 7.3/10
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