Welcome to Brakebills University.
Coming on the heels of the premieres of MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles and Freeform’s Shadowhunters, Syfy’s The Magicians might seem like just another fantasy adaptation making its way to the small screen. But this adaptation of Lev Grossman’s hit urban fantasy novel sets itself apart from others of its kind from the start, with well-cast leads, an engaging premise and an ending that is a great hook for getting people on board for the journey ahead.
Jason Ralph and Stella Maeve in The Magicians
Having not read Grossman’s novel, I can’t speak to how closely this series sticks to Grossman’s story. (Based on the dialogue around the launch of the show, it seems like there will be some deviations.) The pilot of The Magicians, “Unauthorized Magic” (which is available now to watch on Syfy.com), does take a while to put its metaphoric chess pieces in place, but once it falls into its groove it stays there. There’s a lot of potential here to make something truly great, and it’s exciting that so much of that is demonstrated right from the start.
The Magicians follows Quentin Coldwater (Manhattan’s Jason Ralph) as a 20-something who finds himself in a state of depression because of his inability to connect with people in the world around him. We’re introduced to him when he’s about to leave a hospital facility, and quickly are given two key pieces of information: he is good with magic tricks, and he’s obsessed with an old children’s fantasy series called “Fillory and Further” (essentially a direct rip off The Chronicles of Narnia). His best friend is Julia (Chicago P.D.’s Stella Maeve), who was similarly obsessed with the world of Fillory but ready to move on as they both look to get into grad school and as Julia’s relationship with James (Michael Cassidy) gets more serious.
Their conversation about Fillory and Further couldn’t be more timely because, when Julia accompanies Quentin to his Yale grad school meeting, they find themselves actually being swept along to an entrance exam at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. There they discover that magic actually is real, for better or worse, and Quentin begins to understand that there is more going on than meets the eye at this magical university.
Though there are some surface comparisons to both Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, The Magicians becomes its own beast by the end of the pilot. This world is dark and dangerous, and the surprising climax at the end of the episode underlines that this is a world where the stakes are high. That sequence in particular is the one that sold me on this series and has me on board for the season. It’s refreshing to see a fantasy series not on HBO that’s willing to get dark and twisted. The special effects, when The Magicians uses them, all are thrilling, with one in particular at the end of the episode setting a high bar for what the Syfy series will deliver going forward.
Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jason Ralph, Jade Taylor and Arjun Gupta in The Magicians
It’s the opening act of “Unauthorized Magic” that’s the clunkiest. Quentin gets a convoluted introduction that hurts rather than helps his character development, and the opening scene is such a parallel to the opening scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that it’s distracting (though I would argue too many comparisons between the two franchises being a disservice to both of them). It takes about 15 minutes for The Magicians to turn into the series it seems to want to be, and hopefully with that heavy lifting out of the way its storytelling will smooth out.
The cast — which also includes Olivia Taylor Dudley, Hale Appleman, Arjun Gupta and Jade Tailor as Quentin’s fellow students at Brakebills — is convincing and the actors have good chemistry amongst themselves from the start, which is key to throwing the audience into this world. Some of the performances are a little heavy on personality quirks, as Dudley’s Alice takes a while to thaw her cold exterior and Ralph plays heavy on Quentin’s anxiety over losing the magical world he just discovered, but their performances start to lighten up as the audience has more time to get to know the chatracters. It’s a bit jarring that Ralph and Maeve don’t have much time to let the world-altering fact that magic exists sink in for Quentin and Julia, but once The Magicians pilot settles into the Brakebills setting, the storytelling finds its momentum.
The Magicians manages to set up an intriguing, dark mythology in its first hour without going heavy on exposition. The ensemble is well-cast and the writing isn’t heavy-handed, and the special effects are effective when we see them. Overall The Magicians’ pilot is a great starting point for the new Syfy series barring a few clunky storytelling moments, and it’s an encouraging set-up for what’s ahead.
The Magicians premieres Monday, January 25th at 9:00pm ET/PT on Syfy with two back-to-back episodes. The first episode can be seen early online via Syfy.
