Watching Jack Lord play Steve McGarrett on “Hawaii Five-O” reveals three constants: He always wears a suit, his coiffed hair is perfectly in place and his detective skills are unerring.

The show, which broadcast from 1968-1980 and plays in perpetuity in reruns, reveals something about Hawaii, too — that it’s not exactly a place anyone would care to visit.

Scene after scene depicts abandoned warehouses, rusty boat yards, dilapidated houses, sparse apartments, seedy nightclubs, vacant lots, ragged cliffs, and hot and dusty cane fields.

Sure, we see nice beachfront properties in Kahala, but in many cases they are occupied by the bad guys. Victims always ends up face down in the swimming pool or shot while attempting to hide behind a palm tree.

When a scene is filmed at a hotel — quite a lot of them, actually — it’s not exactly E Komo Mai. The rooms are sterile, a place for the good guys and bad to hole up until HPD comes knocking on the door.

Many of the characters on “Hawaii Five-O” are even uglier than their surroundings: drug dealers and addicts, mobsters and henchmen, psychos and sickos, murderers and thieves. They are an oily, pimply lot, draped in ill-fitting clothes and quick to anger — and kill. Everybody perspires.

Even the show’s famed opening credits, which featured attractive brown locals, strong surf and hot hula, were interspersed with glaring blue police lights and Danny Williams peering through a cracked windshield.

And talk about shameless product placement: In addition to all those hotel rooms — the opening credits show McGarrett on top of the Ilikai, after all — quite a few episodes involve Honolulu International Airport, where United Airlines seems to be the only carrier.

Yeah, it was just a cop show. There were lighter moments, too — remember Hume Cronyn disguised as an Asian robbing the bank in Aina Haina?

But “Hawaii Five-O” was also, effectively, an international postcard for the Land of No Aloha. With apologies to the current Honolulu city prosecutor, it was Carlisle Country.

The islands received far more favorable treatment in, say, “The Brady Bunch,” despite Greg almost dying in the surf after touching an “ancient taboo idol.” Heck, Don Ho and Sam Kapu sang “Sweet Someone” to Bobby and Cindy.

Yes, yes — “Five-O” had many strengths: Filmed on location, the Venture’s theme song, plenty of roles for local actors, liberal droppings of Hawaiian words and Pidgin lingo, and consistent reference to actual street and place names.

Back on the negative side, however, something invariably bad happens on those streets and at those places. A sharpshooter at Hanauma Bay! Wo Fat’s yacht anchored off Waimanalo!

And in the most diverse state in the union, the show’s stars were white men. If McGarrett wasn’t hogging screen time, Danny was given the occasional lead plot line. The actor who played Hawaii’s governor fit the same profile, as did many law enforcement and military officials.

Even while using many nonwhite actors, the producers also hired white actors to play brown locals — Ross Martin as Tony Alika, for example.

The new show appears to be set on carrying on the unfortunate casting. Australia actor Alex O’Loughlin plays McGarrett and Scott Caan is “Danno.”

On the positive sign, Daniel Day Kim from “Lost” will play Chin Ho Kelly, Grace Park will play Kono Kalakaua, Jean Smart will play Gov. Patricia “Pat” Jamenson, and Taryn Manning will play Mary Ann McGarrett, Steve’s younger sister.

Still, it’s looking like the new “Five-O” will be a cross between “24” and “Baywatch.” A clip of the shows the four leads in action sequences cut with images lifted from the earlier’s show’s opening credits.

Yes, the new show will mean jobs and business in the islands. It can’t hurt to have Hawaii seen for one hour each week in prime-time television.

And yes, bad stuff does happen in Hawaii. (Thank goodness we have Peter Carlisle, eh?)

But will a TV show ever successfully capture the real Hawaii?

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