There are two kinds of people in this world – those who lean in to the magician’s world of tricks and illusion and those who immediately start to take it apart, explain how it must have been done and remind everyone that: “It’s not real!” The second group are among the worst people in the world. If you have any of them in your life, cut them out now. If they cannot understand the point of theatre, if they cannot see something amazing without wanting to dissect and destroy it, if they feel the need to point out that a woman cannot actually be sawn in half or a rabbit pulled from an ordinary top hat – well, they do not think much of you, my friend.
So, then, to Miracles – a Christmas special showcasing the skills of the magician Steven Frayne (AKA Dynamo) as he travels up and down the country, entertaining people on the streets with astonishing card and other tricks. These include flinging someone’s ring around a bottle neck; making a pack of cards fly out of a glass to leave behind only the one named by a passerby; and changing the names of public wifi networks on everyone’s phones to the name of one woman’s dog.
He also heads to charity groups in community centres, to hospitals, to volunteer organisations working with homeless people and to sports clubs for disabled and disadvantaged young people. Slightly emetic speeches top and tail the show, reminding us of the true magic of Christmas (“You walk past it every day”), but into every festive season a little schmaltz must fall. We soldier on.
At the Nottingham School of Boxing, set up by Marcellus Baz, who transformed his life after surviving a near fatal stabbing, Frayne walks through strings of Christmas lights without them breaking or winking out, reads the man’s mind and shows him his pin number, written on a random receipt fished out of a boxer’s pocket. In Manchester, he meets Musondo and Amaka, members of the Street Angels – a volunteer group that patrols the city in the early hours, offering help to vulnerable and distressed people – and conjures a plumy white feather out of the light of their phones in honour of their moniker.
At a club for footballers with Down’s syndrome, he empties a stream of balls out of an apparently empty bag – simple yet effective, I was going to say, as if there is something simple about appearing to defy the laws of physics. But it is a large and jolly trick after the closeup street magic we have seen; everyone cheers it to the rafters.
My favourite trick is the one he performs for a class of 10-year-olds. He gets them to scribble randomly on sheets of acetate, then asks one of their number, Travis, who his hero is. Batman, comes the reply. Frayne lays the sheets over each other to produce a picture of … yes. The Dark Knight emerges from the massed scribbles. “It’s even got the bat symbol!” shouts a girl at the back.
Travis set up a food bank after a homeless man thanked the boy for giving him money and told him: “Now I can have my tea tonight.” Travis cries as he remembers it. His dad explains that the family had done a lot of voluntary work during Covid and were able to build on that to help Travis achieve his heart’s desires thereafter. You see in a moment where Travis comes from, what has shaped him and – you know what? It is a kind of magic after all, isn’t it?
Miracles roams the same emotional terrain as Noel’s Christmas Presents used to do at this time of year, before Edmonds found cosmic ordering and a higher calling. The big difference – which becomes increasingly conspicuous as the programme goes on – is that the good people and the charities to which they are dedicated do not get any reward other than being shown a few magic tricks. This feels unmistakably off. The feeling crystallises – for this viewer at least – into marked dissatisfaction when, at the end of the final (spectacular) stunt, involving Frayne walking on empty air between a building and a huge Christmas tree to light the latter, the assembled good people are given presents that turn out to be wooden boxes inscribed with inspirational messages. It leaves a mean, sour taste in the mouth. It would have cost so little to end things differently.