If the job of a magic show is to astonish, BBC Three's "Killer Magic" did the job. My jaw was on the floor within five minutes.
Not over the magic, you understand, but over the show itself. I defy you to find a program so hacky, irresponsible and sexist without resorting to Saudi Arabia's version of Jackass.
This is a show which aimed to pit top magicians against one another, but then seemingly ran out of time or money or ambition and instead hired four middling performers to do the sort of tricks you can buy for a tenner on most magic websites.
Then, the producers decided to shamelessly lift the writing and editing style from "Now You See Me," the godawful magic/heist movie from 2014.
For those who have mercifully been spared from watching the film, it focuses on four magicians, each of whom is a specialist in one "type" of magic. Mentalism, card manipulation, etc etc.
"Killer Magic" attempts to replicate this, except none of the magicians on the show seem particularly good at anything. Consider card manipulators like Chris Ramsay and then wonder why, if that's the level of YouTube talent available, the BBC went with these four losers.
Three losers, actually. Some sympathy should be spared for Jasz Vegas, a woman magician in what is traditionally a painfully male-dominated game. She has almost certainly had enough shit to deal with to get anywhere at all in her career. Not that the BBC cares about this - whilst the three male performers are introduced as set personality types - "The Charmer," "The Goth" - Jasz Vegas' intro mines new depths of lazy sexism by introducing her as "The Girl."
That's it. That's the best anyone on this embarrasing dumpster fire of a show could come up with. "The Girl." One can't help but wonder what the hook would have been had one of the magicians been black...
Putting the astonishing feats of sexism aside to focus on the middling feats of magic, we somehow run into something even more offensive. The hook for each episode is that the four magicians (or three magicians and "a girl") will compete at challenges and whoever is judged to have come last must attempt a dangerous stunt.
This is utterly morally bankrupt.
Penn & Teller, James Randi and Brian Brushwood have all written and talked extensively about the morality of "dangerous" magic. Penn & Teller in particular are known for seemingly dangerous stunts, but have always adhered to Houdini's maxim that no magic trick or feat of escapology should really be more dangerous than sitting at home on the couch.
Even magicians like Penn & Teller or The Amazing Jonathan who sometimes do incredibly gory set pieces adhere to the same slapstick rules as Road Runner cartoons or Monty Python's Black Knight; horrible, traumatic injury should be treated as a painless embarassment or an awkward faux pas.
Magic should never actually trade off of danger. Only the semblance of danger.
The thinking goes something like this: In a standard trick, a magician does something which seems impossible but which actually isn't. It's a trick. The spectator shouldn't see HOW it's a trick, and should be left baffled and - hopefully - entertained by witnessing something impossible.
Escapology and "dangerous" magic work the same way. The performer does something supposedly life-threatening, but it actually isn't. It's a trick. The audience can't see how it's a trick and so are entertained by the appearance of danger.
For "Killer Magic" to openly trade off of the idea that their final stunt is genuinely dangerous is stupid and morally wrong. It says that it's okay to endanger the lives of performers (spoiler: it isn't) and it makes the audience morally complicit. If an audience wants to be excited by a seemingly dangerous stunt, that's one thing. But drawing an audience on the premise that someone might be in real danger is lazy and gross and puts you on the moral level of the creepy guy who asks kids if they want to come and see a dead body.
Using the magic angle is also disingenuous. Imagine a series in any other genre where contestants were potentially killed for not scoring enough points. It's downright dystopian. The fact that it's a magic show and therefore nothing is real is only an excuse if you acknowledge that it's a magic show and nothing is real. When your title is "Killer Magic" you dispense with that important caveat, dishonestly, right at the top of the credits.
I see from the internet that "Killer Magic," now available as a boxed set on BBC Three, was made in 2015 and only lasted one series. This means, ironically, that the series which traded off the potential early demise of contestants was brought to a sudden and messy end. And that actually does feel like a demise it's okay to enjoy.
Edit: It's since been pointed out to me that there were actually five magicians on this show. Or four and a girl. They made so little impact that there might as well have been fifty of them.
