‘Deception’ aims to stand out
Crime shows tend to follow a familiar pattern — a person with “special powers” but no prior police experience helps authorities catch elusive criminals.
ABC and CTV in Canada hope there is still magic in this formula with the mid-season drama “Deception.”
The series, which premiered Sunday, stars Jack Cutmore-Scott as a cocky Las Vegas illusionist named Cameron Black. The character’s career is derailed, however, by scandal. Before you can say “abracadabra,” he is paired with a take-charge FBI agent (Ilfenesh Hadera) and begins working his magic to catch the world’s most elusive criminals.
If this premise sounds familiar, there’s a good reason.
On “Castle,” for instance, Edmonton native Nathan Fillion played a best-selling author who helped track down bad guys by thinking like the crooks in his crime novels. Simon Baker’s charming character on “The Mentalist” used his supposed psychic skills to solve crimes. On “The Listener,” Craig Olejnik’s paranormal paramedic could “listen” to victims through his finely tuned telepathic powers. At first, the investigative bureaus on all these shows want nothing to do with these gimmicky civilians.
But “Deception” is different, says executive producer Chris Fedak. For one thing, it’s on a much bigger scale.
“We call it ‘Magician: Impossible,’” says Fedak, who was one of the creators behind the NBC action-comedy “Chuck.”
As a fan of classic TV, Fedak told reporters at a press event in Pasadena, Calif., in January that he researched shows like “Blacke’s Magic,” a magician-based series starring Hal Linden in the mid-’80s, as well as a series Bill Bixby headlined in the ’70s called “The Magician.”
Helping Fedak make it happen is executive producer Martin Gero (“Blindspot”). Raised in Ottawa, the Ryerson University grad admits he’s a “huge fan of magic” who used to perform tricks at birthday parties.
His and Fedak’s first challenge was finding an actor who could realistically perform the sleightof-hand that’s called for in the script.
London-born, Harvard-educated CutmoreScott wowed them at the audition.
One of the actor’s best tricks, in the tradition of fellow countryman Hugh Laurie, is to make his British accent completely disappear.
The card skills were a steeper challenge. The 30year-old modestly insists he practised enough to “inhabit the skin of someone who can do these things.
“The good thing about being an actor instead of a magician is I get multiple takes,” says CutmoreScott.
Nonsense, says Gero, who adds Cutmore-Scott is constantly practising and does a great deal of the close-up magic viewers will see on the show.
“He could turn pro if he wanted to,” he says.