I love magic, especially close up magic. To fool the eyes of someone right in front of you, who is paying close attention, requires serious dedication and enormous investments of time. I’ve watched a few shows and biographies relating to magicians on Netflix.

Good, mediocre and great.

The good. Dealt

Dealt is a documentary movie by Luke Korem about Richard Turner, a card mechanic (he doesn’t like to be called a magician) who is reported to practice around 16 ours a day and is probably the most amazing manipulator of a deck of cards I have ever seen. The first time I remember seeing him was on That’s Incredible! about a million years ago (I really miss that show) when he was still using his old time riverboat gambler stage persona. More recently I watched him on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, where he did successfully fool them, and his skill with cards is more amazing than ever. An hour and a half may seem like a long time to spend on someone who is simply a really good card cheat, but he’s also a sixth degree Karate blackbelt!

What? That doesn’t impress you? Did I mention Richard Turner has been legally blind since he was a child?

The mediocre. Death by Magic

It’s okay. Drummond Money-Coutts eight episode Netflix series is well produced and the man is a skilled magician, but he’s just not very original.

If you have not seen a lot of professional magicians perform, you will most likely enjoy this series. He performs a wide variety of well known magical routines with skill that will have you scratching your head trying to figure out ‘how did he do that?’ but for someone like me who has watched a lot of magicians over the years, he breaks no new ground. His tricks, escapes and illusions are all acts I have seen over and over again throughout the years, just presented in a slightly different way. Also, the premise of the series is ‘recreating tricks that have killed magicians in the past!’ but seriously, almost every episode ends with “Oh my god, he’s dead. he’s dead!” but we know he isn’t. This isn’t Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, noone watching seriously believes he’s perished (for one thing “Magician dies while filming Netflix special would have been all over social media if it had happend) this is Star Trek. Kirk (or Picard) always makes it out alive.

If you are looking for illusions, mentalism and feats of prestidigitation that are so cutting edge they baffle seasoned professionals, and aren’t saturated with ridiculously fabricated drama, might I suggest…

The great. Penn and Teller: Fool Us

I love this show. I’ve watched it since it first started airing in North America in 2014. The premise is simple. Penn and Teller invite magicians from around the world to perform their best act for them and try to stump a duo of magic performers and historians who have been living and breathing magical acts for over forty years. Anyone who can perform a trick that they can’t puzzle out gets to perform it live on their Las Vegas stage.

Their goal is to break up the stagnancy they see in many magic acts today. In the past they have tried to do this by showing in detail how many of the most common tricks and illusions are performed, hoping to force them to give up old and tired routines and to truly innovate, but now have decided to instead focus on shining a spotlight on the people who bring something new and fresh to the craft. On this show I have seen some truly cutting edge performances. Acts I have never seen before and that genuinely had me saying “Holy crap that was amazing!” out loud. The first two seasons are available now on Netflix (Canada I should specify, but probably other regions as well) and I highly recommend watching.

Also great, but no longer currently on Netflix (Canada).

An Honest Liar

Magician, escapologist, performer, author, teacher, professional skeptic and Uri Gellers arch nemesis, James Randi is one of my favorite people.

An Honest Liar is a biographic documentary by Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom about The Amazing Randi. As a stage magician alone, the man was fantastic to watch, but later in his career, like Harry Houdini, began to spend more and more time debunking Psychics, Faith Healers and others who claim to have true supernatural powers. A co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, he offered a one million dollar reward to anyone who could give him incontrovertible proof of any supernatural power or event. The reward was never claimed. My favorite part is when he is teaching a class about how horoscopes work. I had seen the clip elsewhere before this documentary and reference frequently when people as me “What’s your sign?”

He has lead an amazing (no pun intended) life and this documentary certainly deserves the awards it has won. I hope it returns to Netflix eventually so that I can watch it again, and I would urge others to watch as well if it does.