Last night was part 1 of UK mentalist Derren Brown's (who used to be entertaining) fake zombie apocalypse. The premise of the show was one candidate from the general public of suitable background was subject to a subliminal conditioning process and then hypnotised during a fake bus journey during which some asteroids were said to hit the british isles as a prelude to 'infection'. During this bus journey (the passengers and driver were all in on it) soime explosions were triggered on the side of the road presumably as small meteorites, noone reacted at all. They even drove past a scene with a car on fire and a couple that had escaped looking very shaken and crying. Then Derren appears, previously hidden away at the back of the bus, and puts the guy to sleep with a touch of his magic hand. He subsequiently wakes up in a medical facility where he meets a teenage girl he's supposed to protect and discovers that zombies are real. It ends with him being rescued and taken to a safe facility by a scots man where the next part of his adventure will start, next week.

One of the most bizarre things i've ever seen on TV. Utterly staged of course. You can't just walk up to people and hypnotise them for starters.

So you didn't like it, then?

I thought it was good, but I'd rather not see Derren setting up all the scenes - it reinforces "hey this is a tv show about Derren putting a man in a horrible situation, in case you forgot". I'd rather just see Steve's apocalypse survival story. Show Derren's pre-planning, yeah, but leave him out until the end.

Quote from: Ladybird;595363So you didn't like it, then?

I thought it was good, but I'd rather not see Derren setting up all the scenes - it reinforces "hey this is a tv show about Derren putting a man in a horrible situation, in case you forgot". I'd rather just see Steve's apocalypse survival story. Show Derren's pre-planning, yeah, but leave him out until the end.

It's not that i didn't like it, although the setup was laughable; the bus sequence was terrible - and none of the other actors respeonded at all! It's that it's so obviously staged. There is no way that guy wasn't in on it, not least of all bcause it hinged on derren brown having psychic powers.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;595378It's not that i didn't like it, although the setup was laughable; the bus sequence was terrible - and none of the other actors respeonded at all! It's that it's so obviously staged. There is no way that guy wasn't in on it, not least of all bcause it hinged on derren brown having psychic powers.

I was still cooking for the first minute or two; did it have the usual disclaimer that Derren does it all with illusion, trickery, showmanship and mindfuckery, not actual magic? Because nowhere in that disclaimer did it say who the mindfuckery was being done on... there's the hypnosis thing, which isn't that difficult to learn how to do, but it does rely on the inductee on some level being willing to be hypnotised.

If you've been on TV for fifteen years showing people that you can go "sleep", well... it gets easier every time.

We thought the actors were completely over the top on the bus, the way they were reacting to the hits and the driver. But while it looks very staged to us, that's because we know what's happening; that journey would have been pretty scary if you weren't in on it, I think.

It's part of the problem with TV magic shows; you always have to suspend your disbelief long enough to accept that the person hosting the show is really sawing a bus in half or hypnotising a perspex box or whatever, but the only reason they're on TV is that they are professional liars and tricksters, and quite open about that fact.

The premise is that the guy is not an actor. But there isn't one part of any of this that convinces me of this. Euither there is a subtext to this that's the real trick, or it's just a very bad stunt. Besides there is only so much you can legally put someone like that through while they are unaware.