Syfy, Monday, Jan. 25, 9 p.m.
Lev Grossman’s series of novels that begins with The Magicians is not terribly original; he clearly combined Harry Potter with The Chronicles of Narnia. At an invisible school in Upstate New York, college students study magic and a few of them discover that the beloved novels about the mythical land of Fillory were actually true stories. SyFy’s adaptation ages the characters, putting them in grad school instead of undergrad, ramps up the danger and drama and inserts a good amount of sex that was non-existent in the books. The casting is quite good, with Jason Ralph as our nerdy, nervous hero Quentin Coldwater, Olivia Taylor Dudley as the uptight and dangerous blonde Alice and Arjun Gupta as the dickish and sexy Penny. The pilot, available online before the official premiere, is exciting, mysterious, sexy and creepy.
