I wonder how many spins the big wheel that the American TV industry uses to decide which movie to reboot next has left in it? Or do they use a dartboard?
Either way, there are two ways of adapting the premise of a famous film to television: the creatively satisfying, boundary-pushing way, a la Fargo, Hannibal and Westworld; and the Lethal Weapon way. The latter involves studiously photocopying every other network cop show, sticking on a shiny new label, and hoping the audiences aren't fed up yet.
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Trailer: Lethal Weapon
A TV series based on the movie about a pair of police officers working in LA.
This is a show that takes its title and main character names from the much-loved action franchise, but was written by people who spent a year in a bunker watching every episode of NCIS and Hawaii Five-O.
The adventures of Danny Glover's uptight by-the-book veteran Roger Murtaugh and Mel Gibson's suicidally crazy maverick Martin Riggs are here diluted to homeopathic levels, with Damon Wayans, star of some of the world's blandest entertainments of the last 30 years, failing utterly to channel Glover as a mildly tense Murtaugh, and Clayne Crawford seeking to match Gibson's tortured, madcap energy mainly by wearing a slightly untidy hairdo.
![The new Lethal Weapon team: Nowhere near as good as the original.](/web/20170209115754im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/4/s/e/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu4sce.png/1486606251030.jpg)
This wacky pair is like oil and water – or maybe more like water and a different brand of water. They strike sparks off each other like a rock hitting a cat, and the lethargy of the characters is matched by the writing, which at its best rises to the level of a mid-range Diagnosis: Murder episode.
Sunny locations, inoffensive banter, detours into the detectives' fairly uninteresting personal problems, interrogations of shady characters who learned to speak English by watching Miami Vice, a fistfight, a shootout, rinse and repeat: if you enjoy familiarity and hate surprises, you'll love this show.
The idea, I suppose, is that with Murtaugh's straight-laced devotion to duty, and Riggs' penchant for breaking all the rules because he gets results, dammit, they form the ultimate crimefighting team.
But their personalities have had their edges sanded down so much that all you have is two moderately competent cops exchanging uninspired wisecracks on their way to solve equally uninspired crimes. Battling Mexican drug cartels? How ever do they think this stuff up?
The supporting cast seems to be there purely to hand the two leads folders, feed them exposition, and look quizzically at Riggs' shenanigans. Except for Murtaugh's wife, who is on a doomed mission to make Damon Wayans seem likeable, and Riggs' therapist, on an equally futile quest to make Riggs look complicated.
When a show is a remake, the question is always: why? Lethal Weapon isn't too fussed about trying to answer. The original movies didn't offer any wildly innovative premise to play around with: they were slick buddy-cop formula flicks, elevated above the pack by the Gibson-Glover chemistry.
The TV version strips away any vestige of originality, meanders through the repertoire of standard TV cop scenarios, and gives its already fairly charisma-challenged leads very little to work with. With no Gibson, no Glover, and no attempt to slip the noose of cliche at any point, Lethal Weapon fails both to be at all Lethal Weapon-y, and to bring anything new to an already painfully overstuffed genre. It'd be depressing, were it not for the fact we can always just rewatch the movies instead.
Lethal Weapon airs on Nine, Sunday, 9.30pm