Derren Brown - Apocalypse

maximoose

Just saw the ad for this lastnight, starts 26th Oct.

The first of a two-part show, Apocalypse unleashes Derren Brown's most audacious plan yet - to convince one person that the planet has been devastated by a catastrophic meteorite strike, that zombies now roam the land and he is one of a mere handful of survivors.

Our 'survivor' is someone who takes life for granted, and has yet to truly value what he has. The adventure that awaits him is meticulously crafted to give him the ultimate wake-up call, and teach him valuable life-lessons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUnvhQH9LvU

Sounds great to me, imagining some sort of grand fallout-esque set for this guy to explore (and crap himself while trying to evade zombies). Cant wait

Kirby

I like Derren Brown but there is no doubt that his stuff is hit or miss. The haunted asylum shtick wasn't up to much as I felt the 2 minute payoff at the end wasn't worth sitting through the whole thing. While this is a cool concept, I'm not sure it will work and could very well fall flat.

There is a good percentage of people who, when presented with a scenario like that, would do something wholly unpredictable like take their own life. To stop something like that happening, there would have to be "safeguards" in place which could wind up neutering the whole thing.

I hope they pull it off but I have my doubts.

horgan_p

I do so wish he'd go back to doing mentalism.Hes an amazing showman.
David Blaine did the same when he stopped doing card tricks and started acting the gom in boxes , ice etc.

maximoose

horgan_p wrote: »

I do so wish he'd go back to doing mentalism.Hes an amazing showman.
David Blaine did the same when he stopped doing card tricks and started acting the gom in boxes , ice etc.

I do wish he'd bring back trick of the mind for another series, but I have really enjoyed his specials of late. The Experiments and Investigates were pretty damn great.

Professional Griefer

Class, love Derren. Really looking forward to this.

briany

It sounds like something that will be inherently funny, to the viewer I mean, watching the poor cratur as he has to contend with zombies, of all things. His terror at someone who's actually a third year drama student should be entertaining.

mike65

Did Charlie Brooker mislay a script?

TokenWhite

I really enjoyed most of his earlier stuff. I remember a scene were he chanced upon a random in the middle of a street, stopped and talked to him for a brief moment, gave him a water bottle to hold, then asked him for his watch, which he unclasped and gave to Derren. It was much more simple and I actually believed he had a could not only predict how people would think and act in certain situations, but also control it to an extent.

These days though he seems to try and take on much more complex scenarios and so I can't help but think a lot of it's staged or the people at the centre of the scenarios are either stooges or are just playing along, a bit like you might see at a local hypnotist's show. And when you're constantly questioning whether what you see is genuine or staged, it takes a lot of gloss from the entertainment of it.

Professional Griefer

Yay, its on tonight!

delad

if there is going to be zombies this is going to be ridiculous, no one would fall for that, if they do then they are a stooge

ednwireland

has saorview got a emergency broadcast system

o1s1n

This is hilarious

delad

oh right, hes being hypnotised, didn't realise that was part of it, but don't understand how they hypnotized him on the bus

Mark200

I think it's pretty cruel tbh, to put someone through that

J. Marston

A normal person would have picked up some form of weapon by now.

ednwireland

Mark200 wrote: »

I think it's pretty cruel tbh, to put someone through that

hey he volunteered, he wanted his 15 minutes, i'm sure he could have not let them broadcast although derren would probably have hypnotised him at that point

gogo

Mark200 wrote: »

I think it's pretty cruel tbh, to put someone through that

Me too, dont know how he hasnt actually pissed himself yet

Mr.Nice Guy

Reminds me of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ufTb8jcN8M

tbh.

gogo

ednwireland wrote: »

hey he volunteered, he wanted his 15 minutes, i'm sure he could have not let them broadcast although derren would probably have hypnotised him at that point

Volunteered before or after wards?

Mark200

ednwireland wrote: »

hey he volunteered, he wanted his 15 minutes, i'm sure he could have not let them broadcast although derren would probably have hypnotised him at that point

Oh I missed the start, just tuned in when they were hacking his phone... got the impression he was just some innocent guy.

foxinsox

Mark200 wrote: »

Oh I missed the start, just tuned in when they were hacking his phone... got the impression he was just some innocent guy.

He volunteered for a show, but was told he didn't make it...

But he actually did ..

I'd be useless, curl up and cry..

Dead Man Walking

Its mad if he really is hypnotized and its not a setup. bet he is wearing that peaked cap in the control room as a nod to the truman show

delad

I can't believe a production company would get permission to run such an experiment, most people would of had a heart attack, this has to be fake

00sully

It's fake for sure this is what brown does now trying to be all showman and convince the VIEWER its true.

AlmightyCushion

I reckon it's fake. Surely if England was hit by a meteor we would have heard something about it over here, RTE aren't that bad.

ednwireland

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

I reckon it's fake. Surely if England was hit by a meteor we would have heard something about it over here, RTE aren't that bad.

lol

i must admit i've been bored with the recent ones, but got sucked in on this one, musta been hypnotized:D

feelpablo

Good tv and pure entertainment.... Not what most want to see from Derren.
But if he has to do these sort of specials in between his stage shows and the better tv series than I can't complain with a little zombie action!!!

AlmightyCushion

They're showing 28 weeks later on E4 now as well.

00sully

feelpablo wrote: »

Good tv and pure entertainment.... Not what most want to see from Derren.
But if he has to do these sort of specials in between his stage shows and the better tv series than I can't complain with a little zombie action!!!

True I still watched it and will watch the conclusion prob I'll pretend its not all setup :pac:

FouxDaFaFa

I enjoyed this. I hated the design of the credits and the cutaways of Derren speaking directly to the camera, found the shaking camera really annoying.

The show itself though, was very interesting. It made me uncomfortable how involved they got in his personal gadgets (lol at the blurred code written by the hacker) but it does show how people's views can be shaped so dramatically by the media they listen to/watch.

As someone mentioned above, I probably would have grabbed a weapon too. But I would also probably have had a panic attack by now.

fasttalkerchat

J. Marston wrote: »

A normal person would have picked up some form of weapon by now.

He was probably fed a suggestion not to as a precaution.

LizT

Am I the only one who thinks your man is an actor?

FouxDaFaFa

LizT wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks your man is an actor?

I don't think so. I follow Derren on Twitter and a while ago he mentioned they were editing the show while the guy was there, making sure he was okay with everything.

o1s1n

I'm generally very skeptical of such shows myself - but if that guy is an actor, then he's the best actor in the world at expressing fear and confusion.

Sofaspud

All the people talking about him picking up a weapon, all he's heard is that they're "infected". He was in the ambulance / compound before he knew of any aggression and as far as he's concerned they could just be sick and desperate for someone to help them somehow. He doesn't know they're "Zombies".

And Derren never uses stooges, he makes that clear as much as possible. If he ever did, it would definitely come out and ruin his career.

Allround Predator

Tbh its a bit cruel what they did to that fella, he was probably left traumatized after it. Dont think anyone deserves to get that done to them even if they are lazy ****s that sits all day doing noting, the bloke is only 21 at the end of the day.

Dickmcsavage

LizT wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks your man is an actor?

I was sceptical myself but enjoyed the show. The illusion has just been shattered now that I've just seen your man appear as a paid actor in a sketch on soccer am this morning. It was the "I'm an A-League celebrity get me out of here" segment shown at about 10:10 / 10:15 am.

fisgon

delad wrote: »

oh right, hes being hypnotised, didn't realise that was part of it, but don't understand how they hypnotized him on the bus

Yeah, this was my problem with it. It's not possible to just hypnotise anyone, they have to be suggestible and open to it, they have to be hypnotizable. The whole thing depended on Derren Brown being able to hypnotise him on the bus. If that had failed then there was no show.

I assume that they had vetted the guy beforehand somehow, to check that he could be hypnotized easily. Most people would not just zone out like that, no matter how good a mentalist Brown is.

Agricola

Pity the guy is a bit of a personality vacuum. Im not sure when he opened his mouth less, in his real life or during this apocalyse! Originally thought a slighter older guy with a bit more about him would have been a better bet from a TV perspective, but then I suppose Brown has to pick someone who is very suggestible / a bit dozy.
Trailer from the concluding part looks interesting though.

Goldstein

The absense of any cursing proves beyond any doubt that it's fake.

Still an enjoyable show to watch though - they went to a lot of effort to make it appear as though he was a genuine "victim". There's a few indoor shakeycam shots I don't know how they would have gotten without him seeing the cameraman.

The phone hacking was fantastic though, they would have any one of us by the balls with that part of the setup. The fake tweets from Brian Cox and the fake news stories planted seamlessly in real apps were great. Although one of the first things he would have done was Google it and look at its Wiki page - they could have pre-empted this of course but there was no mention of it. Then why is there no mention of it on any news station apart from that one fake news clip? it's just not credible at all and you'd have to go to far more extreme measures to fool someone properly.

Furious_George

Dickmcsavage wrote: »

I was sceptical myself but enjoyed the show. The illusion has just been shattered now that I've just seen your man appear as a paid actor in a sketch on soccer am this morning. It was the "I'm an A-League celebrity get me out of here" segment shown at about 10:10 / 10:15 am.

No way this is true, must have been someone who looked like him because Derren Brown wouldn't be stupid enough to air his programme claiming it to be a real experiment and then allow the main protagonist to appear on a extremely popular show the very next morning. That would be career suicide for him and I certainly am not buying it. I'm not saying yer man isn't an actor I'm just saying I don't believe he acted in a sketch on soccer am today.

Anyway, real or not its a great show and if he is a paid actor he should be getting a lot more work in the future because he is fairly convincing at being scared sh1tless

Syferus

Never understood this obsession some people have with declaring things 'fake'. It's the internet forum version of a dog pissing on the wheel of a car.

Also the yearly specials Brown does now are leaps and bounds his best works. The Tricks of the Mind stuff ran its course and another series of that would just be scraping the barrel. This is one of the most interesting and ambitious social experiments/illusions I've ever seen attempted.

Prick!

Browns best shows were the 6 shows about 2 or 3 years ago, that started with guessing the lotto numbers.

Ridley

There's a convincing tumblr blog here arguing that the guy is an actor. With photos an' that.

And the @derrenbrownfake account on Twitter that I assume was associated with the blog has been suspended.

I'm hoping that either the blog and @name are part of the trick on the audience or that the account actually broke the rules to get suspended rather than, say, a company getting Twitter to silence it.

The game always seems to be about how fake the show is.

books4sale

Goldstein wrote: »

The absense of any cursing proves beyond any doubt that it's fake.
.

Do you understand the concept of editing?

.....obviously NOT!

caspa307

im not bothered if its fake to be honest but when they were in the but and the asteroids started hitting, the fact that the bus driver drove like he was bruce willis in die hard, kind of made me question it

Prick!

caspa307 wrote: »

im not bothered if its fake to be honest but when they were in the but and the asteroids started hitting, the fact that the bus driver drove like he was bruce willis in die hard, kind of made me question it

Yeah, if I was the bus driver I would have stopped.

books4sale

Why didn't he grab a crowbar and start taking out some of them freaks or even the bus driver, its the end of the world, every man for himself.

Remember always go for the headshot!

........its the only way to be sure!

Goldstein

books4sale wrote: »

Do you understand the concept of editing?

.....obviously NOT!

Taking the premise of the show at face value, all of the events only happened once - i.e. one take, no reshoots. As the vast majority of the depicted events were seminal to the programme and had to be shown, the only recourse with these scenes would have been to *bleep* the inevitable undisirable remarks which didn't happen. Editing wouldn't have helped in the slightest if he swore during any of those scenes, there would have been obvious gaps in the audio. He was clearly told not to swear or it wasn't in the script. Simple really if you think about it.

fasttalkerchat

Prick! wrote: »

Yeah, if I was the bus driver I would have stopped.

Lads... you do know everyone on the bus were actors, including the driver. Derren explained all that before.

MaroonAndGreen

really difficult to know if its real or not, no swearing indicates that its not.

but how could so many people keep a secret like that?