Derren Brown: The Events

I love Derren Brown, I really do. I find his brand of modern mentalism, where psychology and NLP have replaced psychic powers and ESP, hugely entertaining. Tonight’s show was the first in his new series, The Events, and it was utter bullshit.

On Wednesday he did a 10 minute live show where he appeared to predict the national lottery result with the promise of an hour long show tonight to explain how it was done.

I get that he wasn’t really going to explain how it was done.

I get that he’s an illusionist and most of what he says is BS.

I get that when he’s talking about NLP or psychology or whatnot it’s more often than not just showmanship masking a very simple magic trick.

I get all of this, and I still think he’s brilliant.

Tonight’s show however was a huge disappointment. All we got to explain the lottery prediction was some psycho babble about “deep maths” and the “wisdom of crowds” combined with “automatic writing”. I found this last part particularly unconvincing as Derren is a well known sceptic who once spent an entire show (The Messiah) debunking these kinds of psychic phenomenon. It makes me wonder who the intended audience was for this show because any of his fans, even those who lap up the phoney psychology and NLP stuff, would know he doesn’t believe in any kind of psychic ability.

The one genuinely clever moment was the numbers on the back of the cheque, but unfortunately that reveal was marred by the absurdly unconvincing “stamping on paper cups with possibly a knife underneath” stunt that lead up to it. I actually groaned as we saw the paramedics with their trolley and oxygen bottle trotted out to emphasize how incredibly dangerous it was. When the magician puts themselves in danger (like Derren did with his Russian Roulette stunt) we can suspend our disbelief; we know that they aren’t really going to be in any danger but the possibility is there in the back of our minds, at least enough to keep us watching. When it’s a member of the public who is supposedly in danger we just don’t buy it and we know that they certainly aren’t going to buy it either. It’s a shame because this overshadowed the point of the trick and felt clumsy and patronising.

I think that’s the root of my disappointment; I felt Derren was talking down to me. Like I said I don’t expect him to reveal how it was really done, but I was expecting something a little more convincing than what we got. For the first time with one of his shows I felt there wasn’t anything there for the fans who recognise his act for what it is but can still appreciate the showmanship and the art involved.

All we got with this first “Event” was a rather ordinary split screen camera trick (or a very clever moving stage/mirror trick!) followed by an hour of wholly unconvincing bullshit. I really hope that this isn’t the end of the lottery stunt and that it will be wrapped up much more satisfactorily later in the series.