Comic Alan Davies and Harry Houdini’s magic

Still referred to as the greatest magician who ever lived, Houdini was the original adrenalin junkie.

Alan Davies, left, talks to illusionist David Copperfield in The Magic of Houdini.

Comedian Alan Davies was fascinated with the world of magic when he was a boy — he even had a wand. As he says, when he was growing up in the 1970s you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing a lady being sawn in half. In this diverting film, he explores the extraordinary life of Harry Houdini, the man who against the odds became one of the most successful entertainers.

Still referred to as the greatest magician who ever lived, Houdini was the original adrenalin junkie who became famous for escaping not only from handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets and water tanks but from milk cans, mailbags and steamer trunks, often in front of audiences of 100,000 people.

Houdini’s last stunt, the “Challenge of the Egyptian Mystic”, involved being locked in an airtight casket and dropped to the bottom of a swimming pool, where he remained for 1½ hours.

The amiable Davies is the perfect choice to explore the master illusionist’s universe given that in his long-running television series he played the tousled-haired Jonathan Creek, who found an ideal profession designing illusions for a magician.

In this film, which is directed and produced by Louise Hooper, he immerses himself in the entertainer’s world, holding his breath under ice-cold water, laying on a bed of nails, being sawn in half and getting strung upside down in a straitjacket.

In his bid to understand why Houdini felt compelled to perform such death-defying acts, Davies visits New York where the then Eric Weiss arrived as a child with his Hungarian immigrant family, and made his entry into show business aged nine, performing as a trapeze artist.

The Magic of Houdini with Alan Davies, Wednesday, 7.30pm, History (611).

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