Channel 4 are holding a vote for the best Derren Brown Special, the winning episode will be shown on a special Derren Brown Night in January 2011.
“Derren Brown has undoubtedly brought some amazing television to our screens, his unique methods and abilities have enthralled the nation many times over.
Using his uncanny ability to misdirect, manipulate and mesmerise, the psychological illusionist has performed astounding feats that have left both the subjects and audience astonished.
Channel 4 will be celebrating with a Derren Brown Night in January 2011, and we need your help – Derren and executive producer Anthony Owen have picked a shortlist of their six favourite specials – but we need you to vote for the winner – the best Derren Brown show ever!
To help you decide we’ve got reminder clips and refresher episode guides here, so get watching and get voting!
Here’s Derren’s guide to his top six specials:
Russian Roulette Live
Back in 2003 was the first of my themed televisual specials – the controversial Russian Roulette Live. Over 12,000 members of the public applied to be the person who loaded the bullet. I didn’t realise I was that unpopular.
Séance
The following year I invited a dozen students to participate in a séance to contact the dead. We also asked the viewers at home to call in to the programme to let us know if anything unusual was happening to them at home. And many did. It remains one of the most complained about television programmes of all time.
Messiah
In 2005 I travelled across the USA under a variety of false names to see if I could persuade psychics, new age experts, UFO abductees and preachers that I had amazing super-powers. Which, of course, I don’t…
The Heist
The following year we made The Heist, in which I attempted to psychologically manipulate a group of attendees at a business training seminar. I wanted to see if I could convince them to rob a security van in broad daylight.
The System
In 2008 came a special called The System in which I anonymously taught a member of the public a horse racing gambling system which was 100% guaranteed.
Hero at 30,000 Feet
And finally, my most recent special in which an unsuspecting member of the public, Matt Galley, applied to take part in a television game show and had his worst fears – and his life – transformed.”
Oh, which to choose! I love ‘Russian Roulette’ for the spectacle and edge-of-your-seat final scene, but I also love the life-affirming message in ‘Hero’. This is a very hard choice to make!
The Heist
I like Heist most. The whole process of the program from beginning to the end made the show complete.
(That’s one thing I didn’t like about Hero at 30k feet. The build up didn’t seem so convincing as it did in heist for me. The final “trick” looked a lot more logical in heist than in HA30KF).
For me is Messiah the best performance.
Ciao
I love all Derrens Browns work and one of my favorites is the seance I always watch the re runs even though I know whats gonna happen and then find there is some thing I might have overlooked, there is also the humour to, and deep down you like to think he is magic, absoulutley brilliant!
Def The Heist although all brilliant
Séance
The heist or Seance…..probably seance for the atmosphere
I love all of Derryn’s shows that I watched when I lived in UK (back home in Oz now) I loved The Seance the best though Russian Roulette was a close second. x
The Heist!
Just brilliant how you can manipulate people without them knowing they are being manipulated. Clearly shows how inept and gullible this ‘perfect’ human brain of us can be.
It just has to be The Heist for me. Amazing, such good entertainment to watch – especially the bit in the shop – i’m just gutted I wasn’t involved!!!
Definitely Russian Roulette – it was strange, new and totally unexpected. I know we are all a lot more savvy now about Derren Browns’s machinations of the mind, but even so, i think the tension and the build-up would carry this through. Also, I suspect many people did not see this first time round.
i saw enigma live… was absolutely AMAZINGG!! loved the russian roulette too and hero at 30,000 ft. hes just amazing i cant wait to find out which everyone thinks is the bestt
Messiah. More than usually Derren allowed us in on the techniques and showed how fools and charlatans think.
The Heist
Messiah was by far the best.
- How clever and good looking you are. I must invite you over for tea and hugs. – Phillis
The Heist
I liked the ‘trains of thought’ item the best, and messiah the 2nd!
Russian Roulette – that moment towards the end when Derren hesitates gives me chills everytime…
Russian roulette! Because everything has started with this show
Apparently there is one where Derren throws a person in a sack in a loch. Not sure if that’s true but it sounds good. Re-watched Russian Roulette this morning, just for the hell of it! Need to watch some more by the looks of it.
Oh dear, they’re all so wonderful in many different ways. I’ve voted once or twice and shall leave it at that.
LC x
My choice is for Seance – educational, atmospheric, hugely entertaining and “one of the most complained about television programmes” – brilliant.
THE HEIST, THE HEIST, THE HEIST.
Never equalled.
The Sceance if it were to be showed to believers. For me The Heist. Possibly because the first and last time I heard the trigger song it was in a charity shop and I bought a chunky green knit in celebration. It showed me that it’s okay, even normal, to be a little gullable and so easily influenced. Fantastic show. (Any DB Bluray boxsets due out?)
anything but 30,000 feet hero
This is so hard I cannot chose I love them all, can I vote for all of them please?, I have short listed Russian Roulette, The Heist and Hero at 30,00 feet…. :-/ XX
Woops I meant *hero at 30,000 feet…
Mine’s the Heist, although Messiah comes a close second.
All of them please!! I’ve never even seen the first four!
The Heist of course – It was the only one I was on the edge of my seat with. It had everything – Educational, funny, well planned, & just down right stunning work My least favuorite was Hero. Nice message, but choppy & unconvincing. It started well, then went rapidly downhill from there. I said Bollocks a little too many times with that one (Sorry).
Sooo hard!
The Heist was probably most entertaining. Very cool! Hero was also very brilliant and very inspiring. I loved it down to every last detail!
I could narrow it down to Séance, The Heist, Messiah and Hero but that’s when it get’s really hard!
All spectacular shows! I loved the deviousness of Séance
However I ended up choosing Messiah. Being a huge sceptic I love to challenge people a litle when it comes to their believes, never in a mean way, I just feel that people should know all the facts before they can come to a conclusion themselves, and because most of us grow up around some of these believes ( f.e. religion and psychics) we never really get the fair chance to sit down and think about the facts.. Messiah was probably a very hard show for Derren to do but I loved it!
Messiah — showed just how gullible some people are.
Can we vote more than once? hehe
oooh. i dont care which one gets aired. As long as it’s the same presenter
messiah please….only because i’venot seen that one!!! all are fab and would be more than happy to watch them all again.
Russian Roulette I mean essentially it MADE Derren I think…mind you its a good thing he was better with that roulette than the roulette reel on the Events….
They’re all good, in their own way – but the best for me is by far the Heist.
Entertaining, scary and with real WTF moments. Impossible to watch without a big “I’d never do that” discussion.
Just a comment on the comments….
…People who read and post on Derren’s blog seem to be picking the Heist (rarely mentioning Roulette), but people who are commenting on the actual voting page on Channel 4 rarely mention the Heist and are voting for Roulette mostly. Hmmm….
I’m with the group on the blog, and think Roulette is likely Derren’s least favourite with 30,000 being likely his favourite.
cheers,
Chris
I reeeeeeally enjoyed Messiah.
It was incredibly satisfying seeing Derren do what they claim to be able to do better than they themselves seem to be able to. (what a horribly constructed sentence…)
Also, is anyone else horribly intrigued by Phillis’ comment (within Dirty Hobbit’s comment.)
I have given up trying to decide which one I personally enjoyed watching the most! Instead I went for Messiah – as others have said it (maybe along with DB investigates) is the most important of the shows and I think anyone who is (unbelievably!) new to Derren’s work should watch it first to see the spirit in which his other shows are made. No pun intended…
?
The Heist is my favorite. I ve seem all of them on youtube. I’m from Montreal Quebec in Canada. To me, Derren is just fantastic..
Can we get an update on Matt Galley please?
I have to go with Messiah. I loved all the specials, but besides appealing to me as a skeptic (as did Seance and The System), Messiah has a format that really appeals to me, where he convinces several people of his ‘talents’ (so every time, you’re wondering if they’ll see through him or accept the ruse unquestioningly). It shows very well how easy it is to convince people who want to believe. It’s my favourite special to show to friends who hold one of the beliefs shown.
Messiah!
I think it’s going to have to be “the Heist” although for me the System and Messiah are close runners up.
DEFINITELY THE HIEST although all are truly sensational x
Russian Roulette, they’re all great but it’s the best by far
Messiah! Just voted, yay! So excited, can’t wait to see which one they show, I love everything you do, Derren! xxxxxxxxxxxx
Messiah. Has to be. The nature of faith revealed and dismantled in an elegant and entertaining way. Such an important topic. Plus I have only seen it once! More please…
The Heist, thank you for all your fantastic shows, enjoyed them all! I feel like I could watch the Heist over and over and I still feel the excitement!
Very excited about the Derren Brown night in January but it’s very hard to choose just one piece of work. I’ve been pondering for a couple of days and I’m going to vote for ‘The Séance’ as it was ‘truly remarkable’. Bless you Mr B for giving us so much enjoyable entertainment over the years. xx
Of all the above, the one that had me telling my friends ‘ you gotta watch this’ is The Heist.
If C4 are having a DB night, then why not show them all, along with a brand new special live performance with free tickets for irregular blog contributers named mike.
Definitely for me has to be Russian Roulette. By far the most nail biting experience of my life and I was watching on TV. Although you are simply fabulous. It would be easier to say which I didn’t like best as all of your shows are brilliant. Would love the opportunity to see you live. (30k feet was my least favorite, sorry!)
@spiderabc1 the “i’m just going to pop you in a sack (and chuck you in a river)” episode is series 2 episode 4 of Trick or Treat. its on youtube.
my favourites of the above are heist and messiah though all are brilliant. i also really liked the system.
I voted for “Ths System”. It made me re-evaluate my own limited perception. I now spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m *not* seeing when I look at something.
1. Messiah
2. Russian Roulette (had me biting my nails, even though I didn’t watch it live, and therefore knew Derren wasn’t going to shoot himself)
3. Getting tricky now…erm…Seance
4. Hero at 30,000 Feet (because it was just so NICE!)
5. The Heist
6. The System (just because it’s bottom of the list doesn’t make it any less brilliant!)
I love so many of Derren Brown’s shows, interesting to study how conditioning and perception works but “The Heist” was so stunning – I couldn’t believe they could affect the behaviour of the subjects in such an extreme way so easily.
I loved watching Messiah. Well funny. I also met Derren after enigma show in Manchester. Such a friendly guy!