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Here's how Radar changed between the movie and the TV series
Gary Burghoff explains how he adapted the character for a new setting.
M*A*S*H made the best of its cast turnovers. It was an ensemble piece, anyway, with more actors (and of higher quality) than most of the shows it competed with. Given that the show was about war, it almost made sense that faces would come and go. Still, it created some hurdles for the creative team. When an actor suddenly chooses not to return, how are those storylines resolved? Fortunately, war also provided an answer, in that characters could either be killed or sent elsewhere.
Another challenge was the fact that these characters all existed before the TV series. In its initial season, M*A*S*H was faced with forging its own identity in the shadow of the popular film. Sure, it helped that the TV show had a brand new cast, but one actor in particular didn't have the benefit of approaching the script with fresh eyes.
That's because Gary Burghoff— M*A*S*H's Radar— also played the same character in the cinematic version of the story. Whereas his peers all got to plant their flag with a unique take on each character, Burghoff was at risk of repeating himself.
In a Q&A session for TV writer Kevin Levine's blog, Burghoff spoke at length about coming to the character a second time, and the differences and similarities he found as the series progressed.
"In the original feature film M*A*S*H, I created Radar as a lone, darker, and somewhat sardonic character, kind of a shadowy figure. I continued these qualities for a short time until I realized that the TV M*A*S*H characters were developing in a different direction from the film characters. It became a group of sophisticated, highly educated doctors (and one head nurse) who would rather be anywhere else and who understood the nature of the 'hell hole' they were stuck in."
As his rapport with the other cast members developed, so too did Burghoff's characterization. With natural chemistry in abundance, M*A*S*H's ensemble is among television's strongest. Naturally, a trained actor like Gary Burghoff would respond to these developing dynamics by evolving his character to fit the new format.
"With [producer Larry] Gelbart's help, I began to mold Radar into a more innocent, naive character as a contrast to the other characters, so that while the others might deplore the immorality and shame of war (from an intellectual and judgmental viewpoint), Radar could just react from a position of total innocence. This made Radar super active, free and very interesting on a primary 'gut' level, which at times delivered the horror of war (as well as the dark humor we became known for) in an effective, universal way that anyone could understand."
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