There is a belief commonly stated, if not actually held by those concerned with the production of television programmes for children, that the young are more difficult to please than their parents. This being so, one would expect a new drama series with an intriguing title like Ace of Wands, and with a hero, who is a magician and who possesses among other things the power of extra sensory perception, to have an originality and flair that would place it firmly in the seventies.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when, on the evidence of the first episode, it turns out to be, so far at any rate, the same old adventure story about the same old hunt for the same old secret weapon invented by the same old doddery but good professor, which has been stolen and has fallen, if I read the signs correctly, into the hands of the same old international organisation, bend on the same old World Domination. The last bit is conjecture, I admit, but the rest has already happened and the story is going to have to change gear quite a bit if it is going to achieve the kind of originality one would like to see.
Unlike Catweazle, whose magic powers I never for one moment doubted, Tarot, the hero of Ace of Wands, is strictly a television wizard relying on the other articifial effects for his magical inventiveness. Further, neither he nor his two colleagues have displayed the kind of originality of characterisation or approach that one would like to see, the three of them being half way between a kind of junior Avengers and a juvenile Paul Temple (if that is possible).
If one operates on the principle that in any case there are only seven plots, and we have seen them all, I can see that it is unfair to place one's hopes in the originality of approach and production. This is even more true if one's potential audience is young enough, since there is a good chance they will not know the plot, and will be more concerned that the story is presented in a way which fits with the current preoccupations of the time. Ace of Wands goes all out for visual impact, with light shows in the background, flashy sets and trendy costumes. There were some quite inventive effects - the ESP (sic) effect, for example, achieved by inlaying each character in the other's eyeball - but the style of the whole was not consistent, with the result that the good ideas stood out instead of helping to create the overall character of the presentation.