Exclusive Interview: Hawaii Five-0’s Peter Lenkov

February 16, 2011 World Screen
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With its signature opening featuring a huge crashing wave and an unforgettable theme song, Hawaii Five-O premiered on CBS in 1968 and quickly became a hit. The series, which ran 12 years, told the crime-solving stories of a special state police unit in Hawaii headed by Steve McGarrett and his partner Danny Williams. Each episode ended with McGarrett saying, “Book’em Danno,” a phrase that entered pop culture lexicon of the time. Last fall, CBS brought back Hawaii Five-0 and executive producer Peter Lenkov talks about remaking this classic cop show.

WS: What appealed to you about the original show?
LENKOV: When I answer this question, I wish I could answer in a more exciting way, but honestly, it was a big show in my house when I was growing up. My dad was a huge fan of the show and I remember him watching it and watching it religiously. I grew up in Montreal, where winters were very harsh, and when you get to go to Hawaii once a week, that was a big deal. That was the appeal. I just remember that show being on and it being good television. So for me, when the opportunity came around, it was a no brainer because I felt like I already knew the show through osmosis.

On the other hand, there’s a challenge doing these kinds of shows because usually they don’t work. If you could be the one to make it work, that’s very satisfying for a writer, so personally, I had that also driving me. I really wanted to make it work and show that not all of these remakes are just remakes to rebrand something, but really because they mean something to the creator.

 
WS: What did you keep of the original show, and what instead did you change or feel needed updating?
LENKOV: If you watch the show today, obviously it’s a different paced show but what [remains] are good plots and good mysteries. In its day the storytelling was really cutting edge in terms of the crime solving and the forensics they used. I felt like we do all that stuff in television today, but the one thing that really wasn’t mined in the original show was the character development, getting to know these people and relating to them. That was really important to me and I felt like that was where we could add some value to the franchise—really understanding who these characters are. But for the most part, if you’re a real fan of the original, there’s a lot of the same stuff in the new show. If you’re not, what we kept were a lot of the themes that made the original work.
 
But, if you’re a real hardcore fan, you’ll see a lot of stuff and not just the storytelling technique, or the opening credits, but even down to the little details of the accouterments in the office or the car that McGarrett inherits from his father. But for the most part, when I first sat down, I thought, OK, I wanted to really mine the themes of that original show, I wanted to keep the characters consistent, but I also wanted to feel like they could live and breathe in modern society. And I think that today television is about character, so that’s where I probably made the most radical shift from the original.
 
WS: It’s interesting that you say that because, as a viewer, while certainly the action is compelling and the landscapes are gorgeous, when I tune in every week, it’s to see the interaction among the characters just as much as the crimes they’re trying to solve.
LENKOV: That’s great, because that’s actually really what I wanted to do. At CBS they do such great procedural shows, they’re all so good and the crimes are great. But, how do you stand out in the landscape? Most of the shows that I watch, I watch because of the characters, so if you can get people to watch a procedural show for a character, that’s really great because most people don’t watch procedurals for the character.
 
WS: When CBS picked up the show, did you map out all 13 episodes or did you built them one by one?
LENKOV: Honestly, when I first pitched the show, I pitched the pilot and where the characters would be going by the end of the season. It’s going to sound very cocky, but I always felt that if I had a master plan, [the network executives] might feel comfortable with supporting the show. That’s not the reason that it’s on the air, or why we got our pickup, but I felt it didn’t hurt us to know where we’re going and where we would end our first season. I had a very specific end game in mind for the first season and little landmarks that we’d have to hit along the way. Things like when we first meet Chin Ho; he’s disgraced and he had lost his badge and I knew that by the end of the season the story was going to resolve itself, it was going to come a full 180-degrees. There’s this great twist at the end of the season, but I knew where that story was going. I knew about the McGarrett story and where Danny was going to be with his relationship with his ex-wife and his relationship with McGarrett. All those things were planned out. From the beginning, the characters on the page became very three-dimensional. We wanted to explore those little details of the characters that we started with.
 
WS: How do you work with the writers?
LENKOV: We have a staff of writers and we assign scripts to writers like a normal show. A writer will write his outline and a first draft and sometimes they’ll continue with the script, or sometimes we end up doing some rewrites as a group, but I’ll always do some work on it because I feel like that’s my job. I gave birth to these people and I feel a responsibility to the characters. But as we grow, the writers become more accustomed to the mechanics of the show and we’re only getting better. If you look at our first episode and you look at what we’ve produced lately, it’s only because everybody’s just getting better at their job.
 
WS: How does Hawaii Five-0 compare to some of the other shows you’ve worked on, like 24, CSI: New York? What particular challenges does Hawaii Five-0 present that the others didn’t?
LENKOV: Those shows were great experiences. The one ingredient that Hawaii Five-0 has and that those shows didn’t have is the comedy. That’s a completely different muscle to exercise week to week, and when you have that ability to have moments of humor in the show, it opens it up to ultimately a bigger audience, but it also just makes the show more relatable. Some of those shows become very niche shows because of their storytelling. Instead we’ve been given the freedom to add some humor into the mix, which just makes it a more rounded experience.

WS: I imagine the actors enjoy the humor, too.
LENKOV: They love it, and we love it as writers. In some of the experiences I’ve had, people are very earnest and very righteous and after a while, you want them to be human, you know? Sometimes they feel like they’ve got blinders on and they’re not reacting to things around them and I feel [that adding humor] was very liberating.
 
WS: Hawaii Five-0 will most likely be picked up for a second season. Are you already thinking about the second season, or are you still totally engrossed in the first one?
LENKOV: Even if they didn’t pick it up, I’d probably still be writing scripts for these characters. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it! We have the first few episodes mapped out based on how our season’s going to end, so we’re just keeping our fingers crossed. But, it looks good. I think it’s a worthwhile show for the network to support.
 
WS: Do you write only when you’re with the other writers or can you be doing something else and that sets of a spark and you think, Oh, that would be perfect for Danny, or that’s just what McGarrett would do?
LENKOV: All the time, all the time! And, usually, I’ll send myself e-mails and end up collecting them and putting them in files on my desktop. But, usually my day consists of doing a little bit of writing, a little bit of editing, a little bit of time in the room with the other writers, a lot of phone calls and management of the show here in L.A. with post-production, and back in Hawaii. And I’m usually in Hawaii one week a month, so it’s hectic, but I still get to have a life!
 
WS: How did a kid from Montreal wind up in Hawaii writing a hit show?
LENKOV: When I was a kid, I always wanted to write. My father kept telling us—I had two brothers and a sister—to go to law school. I went to law school for a year and I dropped out, I hated it. I wanted to write. So, I came out to Los Angeles and I just got lucky. I just kept writing and my stuff ended up on people’s desks. I always knew I wanted to do this, so I think perseverance maybe helped. But I didn’t have any relatives in the business, it was just hard work and I guess that’s it. I wish I had something sexier to tell you. It’s a boring story, just working hard and doing a lot of odd jobs to make ends meet and ultimately I’m here doing this show in Hawaii and it’s pretty amazing!
 
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