‘Macgruber’ is back in profane Peacock spoof of action flicks

Movie flopped, but exercise in absurdity returns as a series.

The only man for the job may be the worst option possible.

Almost 15 years after “Saturday Night Live” debuted its Macgyver-like action hero Macgruber — and a decade after the same-named movie flopped at the box office — America’s unlikeliest savior is suiting up again in a Peacock series that premiered last week.

The character is based oneman army movies like “Commando” and “Rambo,” but with a twist, said Jorma Taccone, who created the character: “What if that guy sucked?”

“Macgruber,” starring Will Forte as the foul-mouthed, risk-it-all hero, finds the uber patriot behind bars for the past decade for the brutal murder of archenemy Dieter von Cunth at the end of the movie. But when a long-lost villain, Brigadier Commander Enos Queeth (Billy Zane), pops back up, Macgruber is called back into duty to hunt his enemy.

“I think when you’re playing in this sort of universe, there are no rules,” said Ryan Phillippe, who returns as Dixon Piper, Macgruber’s right-hand man whose life was blown apart by his recklessness. “There’s a lot of leeway when you’re working in satire. You can break some of the rules of conventional storytelling.”

Ten years in prison — and off the air — hasn’t changed Macgruber at all. He has no limits or boundaries, no sense of respectability. He’ll do whatever it takes.

“Literally anything could happen,” said Kristen Wiig, who plays Macgruber’s ex-wife, Vicki St. Elmo. “And it does.”

Usually, that’s violence — an excessive brutality in an homage to ’80s action flicks drenched in blood. In the movie, Macgruber didn’t just kill Cunth; he shot him with 7,800 bullets, then a grenade, then urinated on his corpse.

Descriptors get thrown around in explaining “Macgruber”: spoof, parody, homage. But Taccone and co-showrunner John Solomon just ended up making their own version. As Forte

said of the brutality, emulating a genre just looks like the genre.

Forte, Wiig and Phillippe said they dreamed of returning to the world of “Macgruber,” even with the miserable box office returns. Now, Taccone said, they got to make a “bigger, bolder version.” The show, by design, feels like an exercise in absurdity.

Zane called “Macgruber” “kind of punk rock.” Solomon described it as “a person who’s willing to commit to the stupidest thing possible.” Laurence Fishburne, who joins the cast as General Barrett Fasoose and Vicki’s new husband, fell in love with the humor. To hear the cast and crew tell of “Macgruber,” you’d think they were talking about Rambo.

For the character’s cult following, he may as well be.

“It’s definitely an acquired taste,” Forte said. “We don’t make compromises and I think you can feel that as you watch it. We all are trying to make things that make us laugh and people who end up liking ‘Macgruber’ probably just have similar sensibilities.”

COURTESY OF PEACOCK Kristen Wiig (from left) stars as Vicki St. Elmo, Will Forte as Macgruber and Ryan Phillippe as Dixon Piper in “Macgruber.”