Last week was an especially bad one for television magicians. In one fell swoop, ITV and the BBC axed their respective Saturday night magic shows, The Magicians and Penn & Teller: Fool Us. Leaving aside the number of rabbits, doves and spangly costume manufacturers who will no doubt struggle for work in this harsh new climate, the fact is that this is now one of the worst times to be in televised magic.
Admittedly, a lot of the blame lies with the axed programmes. Despite being relatively smart for Saturday night fare, Fool Us found itself trapped within last year's ITV Saturday Summer Line-Up Of Doom – remember The Marriage Ref? – from which it could never hope to escape. The Magicians, on the other hand, was just woeful. The presenters and performers had no charisma, the production had all the faded glamour of a miserable seaside holiday and, perhaps most damningly of all, the minor celebrities who appeared on the show would always somehow escape from their tricks completely unharmed.
But, regardless of the quality or scheduling of these shows, it's sad to see television bereft of magicians. Or at least almost bereft. Because, over on Watch, Dynamo: Magician Impossible is going gangbusters. In fact, it's the channel's most-watched show by some margin. The second series of Magician Impossible begins tonight, and buses are covered in adverts for the show. Watch broadcasts shows like Too Fat For 15 and celebrity rollercoaster gameshow Scream if You Know The Answer. It shouldn't have the money to cover buses in anything. But Dynamo has bucked the trend. Dynamo, it seems, is a big deal.
Perhaps all this success is because Dynamo isn't anyone's idea of a traditional magician. He doesn't have a lovely assistant. He doesn't have a mullet. He appears to suffer from a healthy aversion to dry ice. He wasn't even accepted into the Magic Circle until last year. He's just a normal guy, albeit one with a silly name, who can walk across the Thames and hang out with his enormous coterie of celebrity friends whenever he likes.
The closest performer to Dynamo is probably David Blaine. The cool street magician David Blaine who everyone liked, that is, not the weirdo David Blaine who spent a month in a box being pelted with sausages that time. Dynamo's career is still in its infancy, so he still delights in making crowds of strangers yell with disbelief because he's trapped their phone in a bottle. It's derivative, but at least his schtick doesn't involve gooning around with Craig Revel Horwood, so he's automatically leagues ahead of anything that The Magicians offered up.
So there's hope for television magic yet. People may have tired of Penn & Teller and all the swishy-sleeved BBC nonsense, but the future belongs to Dynamo - the new David Blaine. Now all he needs to do is draw an eye on his hand and freak Eamonn Holmes out.
