Derren Brown's Russian Roulette

Well, having been a fan of his Channel 4 show, I was quite interested to watch this, despite all of the bad press about it.

To me, it seemed that this was less irresponsible than a lot of shows / films shown on TV, so couldn't see what the fuss was about.

If you didn't see it, the concept was that Derren Brown, a man called by some a magician, by others as a psychologist selected one person from thousands of applicants to load 5 blank bullets and 1 live round into a gun without showing Brown, which he would then use to fire 5 shots into his head and survive.

To find this one person, he went through psychological and analytical mind games with the applicants to see which ones he could click with mentally. Through this analysis, he was able to learn how these people worked and how to read them.

He eventually wittled them down to the one person, who did the deed.

Brown obviously survived, though he did fuck up judging one of the blanks to be a live round. This however seemed to me to be planned to create tension. He did correctly guess that the last one he fired would be the live round, which seems to me convienient for television and tension.

It was an interesting show, if only for the contestants reactions, and seeing how easily they could be manipulated.
It was also nice to see Brown make mistakes a few times, as it's never really shown on his TV show.

All in all, not a bad viewing, even though it did drag a bit at the start and you just wanted him to get on with the shooting.