Hawaii Five-O

To me this is still one of the all time great cop shows. The thing I think made it so special was its irony. The fact that you it was set in probably the most beautiful of settings, yet it had all the crime of cities like Los Angeles and New York made it Honolulu seem just like any other major American city which is just what Honolulu is. Also, the fact that the native Hawaiians in the cast were not stereotyped made it a great show.

Jack Lord was perfectly cast as McGarrett and pretty much was the embodiment of the character with his tough and almost unemotional demeanor and James McCarthur was great as Danny. Of course, who could ever forget what Kam Fong brought to the show as Chin Ho. This definitely was a classic.

This show lasted for many seasons because of the talents of Jack Lord and great writing, but I think it helped that it was on CBS as well. CBS always seemed to stand behind it's shows longer, even after ratings begin to drop. Perhaps my memory is wrong, but didn't the show end because Jack Lord wanted it to instead of it being cancelled? There are many memorable episodes of course, but the one that always stands out in my mind was the episode with singer Nancy Wilson as the heroin addicted performer. I thought she did a great job! Hopefully the show will come out in a DVD set. I hope the show will always be in reruns somewhere at least!

Although the plots and stories trailed off a little in quality near the end of the series, 'Hawaii Five O' in its prime was a remarkable example of how to do a television show right. It had a lot a factors going for it : Spectacular opening and closing credit sequences, a grabber of a theme song, exotic locations, a charismatic lead actor who had great hair and knew how to work it, and a racially diverse and intriguing supporting cast.

The series creator took a chance and had Jack Lord play McGarrett as a hard-nosed, hard-driving tough guy instead of a "Teddy bear" type, but this worked because McGarrett was so obviously committed to his job and to "Law And Order" that his brilliance and energy won the audience over, and in fact made them like him even more than if he had been played as a "Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes" character.

But the thing that sets Five O apart in my mind, is that whoever was in charge of story and script quality really knew their stuff and were allowed to do their job. H50 episodes had remarkably tight and internally consistent plots and screenplays. The screenplays always played fair with the audience, and almost always featured extremely clever plot devices, gimmicks or MacGuffins that made you admire the deviousness and ingenuity of the characters who were trying to do bad things under Five-O's watchful eye. And McGarett and his staff would scramble against a deadline to understand the gimmick and solve the mystery or the heist or the caper before the 'bad guys' could get away with whatever they were planning. And each episode was directed and edited with crispness and energy that kept everything moving and wasted no screen time.

Many times things were so interesting that the hour long show seemed to be over almost as soon as it started. You can't give a police detective show a much higher compliment than that. To manage to pull this off for so many years was a remarkable achievement.

Three cheers for "Hawaii Five O" and the people behind it. It holds up as one of the high water achievements of television drama.

Th e1970's was often called the age of tv cop shows. You had shows like, Police Story, Cannon, Columbo, Toma, Baretta, The Streets Of San Francisco and Joe Forrester. However, Hawaii Five O was the grandaddy of them all. This show ran longer then any other police show in tv history, from 1968 to 1980, we all watched Steve McGarret unmask the villian and solve the mystery (oh and also to bark "Book 'em Danno" at the end of every episode. I am going to tell you something about Jack Lord that is not generally well known, I learned this from one of Paul Harvey's "The Rest Of The Stories". Although his role as the hard hitting cop would suggest he was anything but sensitive, Jack Lord was really a very different man in real life. He was an artist and a very sucessful one as well and it wasn't because he was a tv star. Five of his paintings are in the famous Metropolitan Musuem of Art in New York City. People have paid fortunes for them! As a student Lord won numerous awards for his art and people have paid fortunes for even his simplist watercolors. Lord often quoted Sean O'Casey and said "Let us find a way to spin joy into every moment of tomorrow's day". As Steve McGarret Lord was almost like a modern day knight. All the tv cop shows since in a way owe their sucess to him. He set a standard that will never be equalled.

This series was so popular that "Bookem Danno!" became a common phrase teenagers uttered around schools while this show ran. Once you see an episode, you understand why. CBS really went to great lengths to make this series run so well.

Leonard Freeman's top notch production shows & holds up well after all these years. Jack Lord is the ultimate Hawaii Supercop in charge of FIVE-O. James Macarthur is great as Dan-o, McGarrett subordinate. The use of Hawaian actors int he cast was UN precedented. The choice of shooting locations in Hawaii seems perfect.

The theme song blows you away & the sequence shown during the theme is priceless as well. The more I think about it, the only way it is not perfect is that with rare exceptions the show became a little too much predictable & formula at times. With the Hawaii locations & always something nice in a bikini around, the formula isn't so bad is it?