Derren Brown

[Simon Pieman]

I agree with Ben.

just to add my opinion of the show - it was weak

[magicroundabout]

never watched last night but went to see him live at his Enigma tour which is being shown on TV in the Autum.

Having seen him live all i can say is the blokes is clever as fuck and the tricks he does are amazing.
Selecting people out of the audiance is completly random and not once did i think they were actors.

[Barry Scott]

All I will add is of course it's real and the bloke's a genius. I wanted to write a load of bollocks justifying why, but then decided I don't care.

I loved the show for the record.

[Melksham Red]

I wanted to write a load of bollocks justifying why, but then decided I don't care.

Same as that but for the opposite reason. I have never watched him before but gave it a chance last night because of missus nagging. I thought it was a complete load of fake shite, poorly performed by shit actors. About as influencial and empowering as watching a load of fake shite, poorly performed by shit actors. Definately a show for the women.

[Jamiesfuturewife]

It started off OK but then really annoyed me!! Like if he was that shy and stuff why would he even apply to go on a gameshow??!
And the bit when he organised that party! God I did a bit of sick
In my mouth - the thing that annoyed me most was the fact he wore the same clothes EVER day??!

[matt_jada]

was it just me, but i was convinced that when the plane took off it was mid afternoon and sunny flying to jersey an hour away.

however later when he thought he was landing the plane it was pitch black, surely he must of realised something wasnt right.

[Jimmy Glass is an Alien]

I must admit i've always preferred his series as opposed to the one off "specials" that he does. Mostly the earlier series as well although Trick or Treat was alright too.

I'd have to agree. I wouldn't mind seeing him live at the Wyvern or something, but the 'specials' do seem rather staged and far fetched.

[Ben Wah Balls]

I just rewatched the one with the granny playing poker and I think that one was probably the least impressive one he's done. I don't actually doubt that she'd never really played poker before but she didn't do anything that showed she had suddenly got good anyway. They were playing a 6 player sit and go starting with 2000 chips and 25/50 blinds with the blinds going up quickly - in that format even some who barely knows the rules has at least a 10% chance of winning even if they're playing the top 5 players in the world and about a 15 to 20% chance of finishing in the top two. The commentators were making out it would be difficult for her to last 10 minutes but that's just nonsense, she could just fold every hand and last longer than that.

They also said she was playing against 5 of the best players in the UK but in reality the only ones who were at all well known were Neil Channing and Nik Persaud and some of the others probably aren't even winning players. That doesn't really make that much difference anyway though because in one 40 hand tournament it's going to mainly be about who gets the luckiest.

In the first hand they showed, Nik was all in on the flop with two overcards and a queen high flush draw and they suggested she had some kind of tell he was weak and was trying to scare the other players but his hand isn't that weak and rarely in particularly bad shape, she called all in and won with a king high flush draw which is one of the only hands that's a decent favourite over him. That is just extremely lucky and you really don't need to be good at poker to make that call. Second hand a player shoved his small blind with t7o and she called with K9s. That was the only hand they showed that I believe anything Derren taught her would have actually helped as the player did look like he didn't want a call but he seemed to be extremely short-stacked anyway which means it's a trivially easy call and she was only a slight favourite anyway so it's lucky to win. In the final hand she lost with AQ v 99 when most of the money seemed to go in preflop and there was an ace on the flop and a nine on the turn. 

Those were the only hands they showed and they suggested she'd been really unlucky to finish second but really she was quite lucky in those hands and almost anyone could have made the top two with the same luck. The programme just took advantage of the fact that most people don't realise that the results of one poker tournament are pretty meaningless and it's only long term results that matter.  If they played the same tournament a few hundred times and she was in the top two the majority of the times then it would mean something.

I thought the one he did yesterday was one of his best though and they are always entertaining. I noticed the simulator they used was a CTC one, which is the same as a friend of mine used when he was doing his pilot training in Nursling near Southampton, so they must have landed at Southampton airport and not Jersey. Triseros is right about anyone being able to do the landing, my mate said that it's a Boeing 737-800 simulator and one of the best in the world but the plane was already stabilised and on an auto-land approach so it would have pretty much landed itself once he disconnected the autopilot, apart from the flare which he didn't do properly anyway.

[Simon Pieman]

Tell you what though, stick me in a 737 and tell me it's going to crash unless I land it and I would be shitting it despite how easy it is.

Which makes sense, the show's aim was not to make him perform super-heroics but get over that initial 'oh shit I can't do this' stage and get the courage up to do something which turned out to be not as bad as expected.

[Barry Scott]

Tell you what though, stick me in a 737 and tell me it's going to crash unless I land it and I would be shitting it despite how easy it is.

Which makes sense, the show's aim was not to make him perform super-heroics but get over that initial 'oh shit I can't do this' stage and get the courage up to do something which turned out to be not as bad as expected.

Exactly, which was why I thought it was good. And I used to have a fetish for reading popular psychology and NLP! (You could see various Pattern Interrupts, which were what really came to reshape him by breaking his habit and routine.)

The end result didn't involve any tricks, as such, just reprogramming of the subconscious.

[Benzel]

I enjoyed it. He's changed that blokes life for the better too.

[Dr Pierre Chang]

In my mouth - the thing that annoyed me most was the fact he wore the same clothes EVER day??!

Haha he liked his G-Star stuff didn't he?

Thought it was alright, enjoyable watch.

[Batch]

Thought this was pretty shit myself. Better than his "the Events" though.

Shame, because his stage stuff and older TV stuff was brilliant.