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Last night on ITV @ 10pm I managed to catch White Magic with Paul Zenon. It was a very strange mix of a rough guide to Sweden mixed with magic.
Personally I quite like Paul Zenon but I must admit I wasn't taken with this show what so ever. It seemed to bound from random bits of local information with quick magic inbetween all connected together with an editing style reminesant of an MTV programme with Attention deficit disorder.
I switched it off after 20 minutes and I think it was an hour long.

I was rather disappointed and was wondering what others thought.

I thought it was okay. His "mind reading" bits need work on the presentation and some of his signed stuff could have been stronger, but when you've hit the Xmas scotch it's okay for staring at. Some of his card stuff was nice, though.

I would agree that some of the card magic was pretty good but nothing totally amazing, but for me it was more the style of the programme I was disappointed with. It was a strange mix of Judith Charmers and David Blaine.....mind you I have never seen the two in the same room together hmmm

This a repeat of the show that was on TV last year, and perhaps the year before that. There is a thread somewhere on everyone's thoughts from last year which you seem to have also summed up.

I've been having a look on Magic Week to see what magic is on TV this year and everything that is on appears to be a repeat.

to be honest, I couldnt beleive how BAD his 'bottle through table(block of ice) was, you could blatently see the moment the sleight was done... i was ashamed that it was not edited out!

There was an awful lot of padding in the show.

On the other hand, most of my family would not shut up about it last night and kept asking me if I could push a block of ice through the table. Paul's a popular magician with the laypeople and you can see why, I must admit that I wasn't super impressed by the stuff I saw recently on Countdown but hey, that's cos I know how it was done.

And there lies the answer....

Magic is designed to entertain and baffle the layperson, not other magicians Zennon has the presence and the know how of making what we perhaps dismiss as 'easy', look truly magical to his lay-audience.

The reactions from your family demonstrate this.

zennon, the comical genius. i love his stuff to be honest. his quick of the mark on his comedy and it must be real difficult to come up with effects for a tv special. i read an interview in a magic magazine about tv style magic and the turn over of tricks is crazy. i think producers may select the ones they like and want viewed, who knows. possibly derren!!!!
most of the people in white magic seem a bit spaced out too!!!

TheGurkha wrote:to be honest, I couldnt beleive how BAD his 'bottle through table(block of ice) was, you could blatently see the moment the sleight was done... i was ashamed that it was not edited out!

It was spectacularly obvious, wasn't it? I saw this programme last year, and that bit made me spontaneously cringe. I watched the repeat the other night with my girlfriend and she either remained quiet or did her usual thing*, but at the bottle-through-table she hooted, 'My God, that was so obvious.' I think it was possibly the framing or something: the surface rubbing misdirection that would possibly have worked reasonably well were one standing in front of the bar slipped by almost invisibly from where we were - one's eyes automatically followed the ditch. Perhaps a few people were watching as he did it at the time and were astonished; later, in the editing, the makers may have thought that they could see it only because they knew what was happening.

I see what greedoniz means about the programme style, but this may be - not without merit - The Future of Magic, in some sense. It's keeping the magic a key part of the prog, but blending it with something else that (hopefully) is interesting in itself and thus might get viewers who wouldn't tune into 'a magic show'. Replace 'magic' with 'comedy' and the format isn't that different to Billy Connolly's 'World Tour of's is it?

*"Do you know how he did that?"
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"No."
"Just tell me this one."
"You always say, 'Just tell me this one.'"
"It's a power trip for you isn't it? That's what it is.'
"Entirely."