Derren Brown: Messiah

Caught up with this tonight, from Friday - Mr Brown visits the USA to meet various leaders of differing belief systems that range from UFO abductees to Mediums and Christian church leaders. The aim is to see if by using his skills he can fool each one of them into endorsing him. As the show progresses most of them fall for it, from cold reading to remote drawing demonstrations these people take it all in. He says the aim of the show is to raise questions about what we accept and believe. I think his approach can do this, but the people he chose for the show were a little off the wall, as he says in the show the reading section was diffcult to perform as he was messing with peoples lives - this one was uncomfortable.

Overall I think that Penn & Teller did a better job of this whole thing in there recent b******t series, more open and honest and with more information. I guess Derren has a problem in this area - it's tricky to expose something as a fraud, when it's the tools you use for your own show as well - not sure if he's really the guy for the job. Don't get me wrong, I know that he never claims any special powers etc. but I think he makes a better performer than exposer...

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