Dynamo: Beyond Belief - what the Must Watch reviewers think

Tuesday 7 April 2020, 16:02

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan share their thoughts on Dynamo: Beyond Belief.

The magician returns to TV with a three part special - it's a mixture of magic tricks, animation and a very honest discussion about the chronic arthritis that left him hospitalised and threatened his magic career.

It's available from 9 April on Sky One.

Have you watched it? What did you think? Leave your comments below...

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(Photo: Inner Circle Films)

Scott says: "Because it's on TV, it just doesn't work as well as it could"

“Countless times, when you’ve seen a theatre performance on stage and you think 'that’s amazing’ and then you see the filmed version on TV later, it’s just not as good.

"Even though the ingredients are there, something just doesn’t translate to give it a real ‘wow' impression through the screen to you at home and I'm afraid this show kind of falls into that trap.

"I think what makes [Dynamo] so good is that he’s a very personable, he’s able to speak to anybody and travel all around the world but when it comes down to the magic, I think part of your brain goes ‘wow that’s a magic trick’ but then part of it, by no fault of Dynamo, goes ‘oh well have they just edited out the TV in a certain way, to make it look like that trick was able to be pulled off’.

"This is not Dynamo's fault. There’s even a clarification at the start of the episode that there are no actors, everything you see is real, there is nothing being manipulated. Yet you can’t help thinking that because it's TV, you are being manipulated and lied to along the way - because that’s what TV has always done. You just don't trust TV as much as you trust Dynamo.

"The budget of this show must have been astronomical because it’s literally like a pick and mix of random countries around the world that he was able to film in. So he’s doing the same trick in Japan with a Geisha one second and then he’s in a Mexican slum the next and I think what I’m really intrigued by is, how do you choose where to go on this show, when you can potentially go anywhere?

"I think the failure of this show is nothing to do with Dynamo himself, it’s just the fact that it’s on TV, it just doesn’t work as well as it could."

(Photo: Inner Circle Films)

Hayley says: "Weirdly, in a show about a magician, I felt like it could have spared us the magic tricks"

"I was really interested in the story of this man experiencing a physical illness that specifically affects the work of a magician. The arthritis caused his hands to tremble and — as he says in this show — the one thing you always need as a magician is steady hands. It’s a bit like Beethoven going deaf and still composing music but changing the way he did it: he innovated, and so did Dynamo.

"Dynamo's inability to do what he did before was the thing that made him think up weirder magic tricks. He thought up 200 ideas while he was in his actual hospital bed.

"I think my problem with this show is just a fundamental issue with magic on TV. We’re so used to seeing visual tricks on the screen and we’re so used to CGI that sleight of hand tricks kind of fall flat when they’re not in front of you in real life. Weirdly, in a show about a magician, I felt like it could have spared us the magic tricks.

"He's relying a lot on people’s reactions, to tell us how amazing something was. He’s got people saying ‘that’s amazing, that’s amazing’ over and over and over and at home, you sort of end up feeling nothing because, like Scott said, TV is a trickster anyway.

"I wanted more of the internal monologue of a magician threatened with the idea that all of his practice and all of his career could disappear because of this new illness. I know cartoonists that have been plunged into the depths of despair because their hands have stopped working and they haven’t been able to draw. I didn’t think there was enough of that in this."