Penn & Teller: Fool Us

Genuinely surprised if there isn't a discussion on this yet.

Penn & Teller, the incredible magician double act have a new show on ITV, which is hosted by Johnathen Ross. The basic premise is that magicians, illusionists, slight-of-hand artists and whatever else preforms in front of a live audience and, more importantly, Penn & Teller, who sit in the audience. The magicians on stage perform their act and, once completed, see if they have fooled the Las Vegas double act. If they have, they win the opportunity to open one of their shows in Las Vegas itself.

Some of the acts are brilliant, especially the ones who have managed to fool them.

This is one of the acts that fooled Penn & Teller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-rDXweytac

Poochie05

I saw this first one of these which was done sometime last year and thought it really good but was wondering if there would be many who could fool the duo, as they seemed to know most of the tricks. When is the current series on?

H8GHOTI

Ross was on Chatty Man a couple of weeks back talking about it. It does sound good enough.
Problem is ITV isn't on Sky. I have it tuned in alright but because you can't set reminders or record it, I just forgot about it.
TV3 don't show it do they?

It's on now, I think?

From the Wikipedia page:

It first aired as a special that was broadcast on 7 January 2011 by the UK terrestrial network ITV and the other six episodes will be aired on Saturday evenings from 18 June 2011

FreudianSlippers

Yeah, it actually is a pretty entertaining show.

What I like is, even when they have figured out how the tricks are done, Penn & Teller are still quite humble, congratulating the acts on their performances. They seem like nice, but loud and outspoken, people.

sink

Deleted User wrote: »

What I like is, even when they have figured out how the tricks are done, Penn & Teller are still quite humble, congratulating the acts on their performances. They seem like nice, but loud and outspoken, people.

Well maybe one of them.

Basq

Yeah, I popped in a reminder on the Magic & Illusion forum before the series started back. But never thought of posting anything here as there was never any discussion here (AFAIK) on the one-off episode back in January.

It's good Saturday night fare.. it's certainly much more entertaining than the majority of the dross on Saturday night.

For anyone who has seen the last 2 weeks since it came back -

2 weeks / 6 acts (AFAIK), and only one who has fooled them. Think at least 2 - 3 fooled them in the original episode back in January alone.

Mentioned this over in Cools Pics, Vids & Links but 'Piff The Magic Dragon' stole the show on Saturday.. very funny!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnAkq-gFTq0

mike65

This is the first show on ITV Saturday night I've watched since early series of Millionaire, some great acts and P&T are quite good as well. The ratings are poor probably as people don't expect anything decent to be on in the summer.

Basq

mike65 wrote: »

The ratings are poor probably as people don't expect anything decent to be on in the summer.

It's not doing terrible actually.. certainly doing better than 'The Marriage Ref' tripe on after it:

Topping the night with just 4.94m (23.8%) was BBC One's Casualty for an episode titled 'Rogue', which saw Dr Adam Trueman struggle to deal with a patient sex-offender, while Lee Mack's All Star Cast amused 3.16m (16.5%).

Elsewhere on ITV1, 3.05m (21.1%) watched You've Been Framed at 6.45pm (+1: 134k), then Bradley Walsh's Odd One In entertained 3.2m (20%) at 7.15pm ahead of Total Wipeout's 2.96m (18.2%) for BBC One, before Penn and Teller: Fool Us gripped 2.88m (15.3%) from 8pm (+1: 294k).

Source

There are episodes available to watch on YouTube, which I have seen, so I'm not entirely sure which are the most recent ones. I loved the black slight of hand artist, though he didn't fool them, it was pretty impressive to watch.

Columbia

I've watched all three episodes of this in the last week, and it's a very enjoyable show. Every act so far has been absolutely great.

In their own portion at the end of each show, P&T do some of their own tricks. I wish they would do some newer stuff that we mightn't have seen before, but while they're doing some well-established parts of their routine, I dearly hope they'll do 'Shadows' -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un1pNtmYguA

Venom

Watched the first couple of episode on YouTube and its a cracking show. I wonder if the winners have to tell P&T how the trick is done to prove their not fibbing tho?

Every act to date has been fantastic and even the intros to the acts are funny as hell and this is coming from someone who ****ing hates 99.9% of magicians

I wonder how long before RTE will try a version of this and make the usual pigs ear of it.

Penn

Venom wrote: »

Watched the first couple of episode on YouTube and its a cracking show. I wonder if the winners have to tell P&T how the trick is done to prove their not fibbing tho?

There's an independant magician backstage who has to know how the trick is done. That way, if Penn & Teller guess how it's done and the contestant says they're wrong, the independant magician backstage will know if they're lying or not. The independant magician will also be familiar with magician lingo they might use so would know what they're saying.

Great show though. Absolutely love Penn & Teller. They have such a great respect for all the acts even when they aren't fooled. Fantastic show.

Barrington

Barrington wrote: »

There's an independant magician backstage who has to know how the trick is done. That way, if Penn & Teller guess how it's done and the contestant says they're wrong, the independant magician backstage will know if they're lying or not. The independant magician will also be familiar with magician lingo they might use so would know what they're saying.

Great show though. Absolutely love Penn & Teller. They have such a great respect for all the acts even when they aren't fooled. Fantastic show.

Really? There was that act recently who was able to memorize where the Aces were, despite the pack being thoroughly shuffled. P&T thought there was a half full (or false? I never did understand what they said) shuffle, but Johnathen Ross was able to verify that there wasn't. I was wondering who was able to tell him. Guess it makes more sense now.

Linguo

We flicked onto this by accident and love it now, it's really nice to have a decent entertaining programme on that's smart and interesting!:)

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

"
MrTeller Teller
I love that acts win on "Fool Us," even when they don't fool us. Piff the Magic Dragon has signed with a TV agent and is pitching a sitcom.
"

from twitter

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

"
MrTeller Teller
I love that acts win on "Fool Us," even when they don't fool us. Piff the Magic Dragon has signed with a TV agent and is pitching a sitcom.
"

from twitter

I really hope that's true!

mike65

The French duo (well trio) on Saturday were terrific.

Basq

mike65 wrote: »

The French duo (well trio) on Saturday were terrific.

They were good.. but found their act really dragged.

Was anyone else a tad suspicious over the last act? That they denied the little "switch trick" despite Penn & Teller having obviously seen "something".

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

teller tweeted about it

MrTeller Teller
Yes, Morgan and West did one fakey move that looked like a deck switch. It wasn't, nor was it their main method, as we learned later.



I did lol at how insistent p&t were that they'd figured it out, they were stoping just short of accusing the lads of being liars

Basq

Were they not asked if they did a "deck switch" move (fake or not) and denied it?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

thery were, but they didn't .

Aldebaran

I didn't see the supposed deck switch, but I assumed that the guy standing beside Jonathan Ross was signaling the other guy to tell him what card Jonathan was holding, and I think Penn and Teller would have guessed this if they weren't distracted by the 'deck switch'.

JohnK

Thats what I was thinking as well but would it not be a bit too obvious?

ScrubsfanChris

Basq wrote: »

Was anyone else a tad suspicious over the last act? That they denied the little "switch trick" despite Penn & Teller having obviously seen "something".

I rewinded many times to the point where they could have done the switch because I was so convinced that they were lying, and I still thought that they did lie, until I saw the tweet that Sir Digby Chicken Caesar posted.

mike65

Another card switch that wasn't tonight.

ShooterSF

I called card switch on last night's show too and it seems to be the go to red herring if a switch isn't used.

When the guy places the tweezers in his pocket he clearly covers the card that came out of the other fellows mouth when he didn't need to; making it look like he had teller's card all the time and switched it out at the end.

Thought the acts were poorer too or at least less likely to have a fool moment with two of the acts (ball and cup and outfit changing) blatantly using the show for exposure rather than presenting something they hoped to fool Penn and Teller with.
Still the magic was as always enjoyable.

Penn

ShooterSF wrote: »

I called card switch on last night's show too and it seems to be the go to red herring if a switch isn't used.

When the guy places the tweezers in his pocket he clearly covers the card that came out of the other fellows mouth when he didn't need to; making it look like he had teller's card all the time and switched it out at the end.

Thought the acts were poorer too or at least less likely to have a fool moment with two of the acts (ball and cup and outfit changing) blatantly using the show for exposure rather than presenting something they hoped to fool Penn and Teller with.
Still the magic was as always enjoyable.

Aye, the Quick Change act was ridiculous. Not a hope of fooling P&T. Seen the same act a few years ago on America's Got Talent with far better changes and much less dancing. The amount of dancing there was just annoying.

ShooterSF

Interestingly on my random trip down youtube lane I stumbled across this P&T trick. Seem similar?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58xyjOFkpxk

Justin10

I went to Penn & Teller in Vegas only a couple of weeks ago. Great show, amazing stuff.

You be amazed how simple their tricks are and they want you to know which is great and all part of the enjoyment.

Show is great, I missed the free show with all the winners in Vegas by a week, would of loved to seen it.