Blacke's Magic is the creation from masters of mystery, Richard Levinson and William Link and stars Hal Linden (previously of Barney Miller) , and Harry Morgan (Colonel Potter of MASH) as a father and son detective team in the Crazy Like A Fox tradition.
Linden plays retired magician Alexander Blacke. Harry Morgan plays Blacke's finagling con-man father Leonard Blacke. "He's a feisty old rascal who has made his mark on the carnival circuit" says Morgan, adding jokingly "though only about half as feisty as Robert Blake!" (star of Baretta and Hell Town, and an old acquaintance of Morgan's from their days as stock players on the 1963 Richard Boone Show).
Episodes in this thirteen part series feature equally mystifying plots for the duo to solve, and — as with other Levinson and Link series such as Columbo and Ellery Queen — the emphasis is less on whodunnit as how they "dunnit". Although Linden performs some magic tricks (without trick photography supervised by technical advisor Jim Steinmeyer, who has worked with
Doug Henning), the series' plots are concerned more with puzzling, "impossible" disappearances and other spooky situations, story ideas more closely resembling the excellent
George Peppard series Banacek of the early 70's rather than the dreary Bill Bixby series The Magician, which on the surface had a similar premise to this show.