Japan's Asahi-TV produced a great little series called TRICK.  Actually, the first season was just TRICK but the second and third seasons were called TRICK 2 and TRICK 3 respectively. I had the chance to catch it on TV here in California.    Yukie Nakama and Hiroshi Abe star is this quirky show about Dr. Jiro Ueda, a famous physicist (Abe) and Naoko Yamada, a talented but usually unemployed magician (Nakama) who team up to solve strange and deadly mysteries of a spiritual or magical nature.  If any of you remember the old MOONLIGHTING  or REMINGTON STEELE series then you will understand the kind of flirtatious, albeit cynical repartee that goes between the two leads.  Each episode is filled with puns and plays on words.  Since I have to read the English subtitles I know there are even more jokes that I am missing but still the stories, which  sometimes have questionable plots, are always delightfully written, directed, and acted.

One of the episodes in TRICK 2 plays homage to Harry Potter, although this little  bespectacled wizard,  complete with robes and proper haircut,  was more likely to have been sorted into Slytherin than Gryffindor.   Basically, he would curse people for a fee... customers would make an appointment to see this little boy and ask him to curse someone they wanted dead.   Ueda and Yamada are hired to put an end to the spell damage caused by this pint-sized wizard.  Of course, this little wiz doesn't really have the power to curse people... that was just a scapegoat for the people to commit murder and blame it on an act of God.  If you ever get  a chance to see this episode or really, all of the episodes, do.  It's really great.  All three seasons plus a theatrical version  are available on DVD, VCD, and VHS, but not all of them have English subtitles or are in Region 1 (like me).  So if you don't have an all region DVD player, you might be investing in one.

I hope Asahi-TV will conjure up a TRICK 4 soon.

                                                Yukie Nakama            Hiroshi Abe

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