Break out your Swiss army knives — Angus MacGyver is back.
CBS is the latest network to dust off a character from the TV graveyard, rebooting “MacGyver” for a new audience nearly 25 years after it ended its original run on ABC.
For those who don’t remember the ’80s series, Angus MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson, was a secret agent for the mysterious Department of External Affairs — and could take an item as mundane as a paper clip and work wonders with it. In the trailer for the new “MacGyver,” a pair of hands is seen assembling an explosive device from a battery, a bullet, a light bulb and a piece of wire.
Anderson was 35 when the show premiered in 1985. The 2016 version of MacGyver is played by 25-year-old, slightly built Lucas Till, who’s appeared in the “X-Men” movie franchise (as Havok/Alex Summers). He says working in those movies was “a vacation” compared to getting into the groove of his new show, which has him chasing planes or jumping out of a helicopter. “Now we’re actually working,” he says.
Fortunately for Till, he has someone in the cast to help him learn how to star on a CBS series: George Eads, who spent 15 years on the original “CSI,” co-stars as Jack Dalton, a former CIA agent who accompanies MacGyver on his high-risk missions. “This pace is frenetic and [sometimes] you think, ‘Tonight, I gave it my all,’ ” Eads says. “At this pace, you need to get it done in a couple of takes in a way that’s going to be compelling and going to be good work.”
His other piece of advice? “Don’t get injured. In one scene [Till] was jumping out of a helicopter. I was like, ‘Hey, dude. Take it easy.’”
The first MacGyver may have acted as a lone wolf, but the new model has a team of associates to help him, for example, defuse a bioweapon that can wipe out human life. Besides Eads, there’s Sandrine Holt (“House of Cards”) as Patricia Thorton, director of field operations, and Tristan Mays as computer hacker Riley Davis.
Creator Peter Lenkov, who did the “Hawaii Five-O” remake for CBS, beefed up the cast so MacGyver could have “a family around him, people that he relies on,” Lenkov says. He discourages the desire for viewers to look for too many matchups with the original show — emphasizing that for all the action components seen in the promotional footage, the new “MacGyver” will face tests of character as well.
“He’s betrayed by one of the members of his team, somebody he was very fond of,” Lenkov says. “And you see him go on this emotional journey. It’s a storyline that’s going to play out over the course of the first season.”
“MacGyver” is shooting in Atlanta, and both Eads and Till have moved there. Till is worried about satisfying the show’s still-ardent fans, and stresses that the character he’s playing is “charismatic and he’s always compassionate. He was an understanding individual.”
As his unofficial mentor, Eads thinks they will ride the wave. “There’s a mountain of work to do,” he says. “I keep telling him that once this comes out and people are digging it, it motivates you.”
“MacGyver” Series premiere 8 p.m. Friday on CBS
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