Derren Brown – The Gameshow: Tonight at 9pm Ch4

178 Comments

1. I agree with some of the comments on here that it all seemed a little staged. Was Chris an actor too? I think had you chosen a sweet innocent girl or a family man in his forties, an all over good guy then the results would have been a lot different. But Chris was a but of a lad, a joker himself, he cheated in his girlfriend and you got the impression that when he found out he would have appreciated the joke. Accused of pinching a girls bum; not that bad, accused of shoplifting, not that bad, being told he’s being fired, i think the audience would have reasonably expected that would not to be ultimately true and i don’t think for a second that anyone in the audience would have expected for a second that he would have got run over. Like has been said before it was the premise if a gameshow and the audience knew there would be tight controls In place for anything bad to happen. I think if people thought they were making genine and long lasting decisions about this guys life and nit just the night from hell then I think the results would have been very different. I’m a huge fan of Derrens but I must admit that I was left a little disappointed by this experiment.
2. Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.
3. I watched this program with suspicion: something felt fake about it, maybe Chris was in on it all along, even the audience.
   It seemed to go too far with the laundry basket ‘planted?’ underwear and smashing up the tv.
   You could also sense something would go horribly wrong at the end. Something that would leave either the audience or viewer with ‘egg on their face’.
   Not sure I learned anything from it.
4. Surely within the context of a gameshow hosted by Derren Brown this isn’t a real demonstration of Deindividuation. Within this context I don’t see that the choices made by the crowd as anti normative, The social norms are hugely shifted by the cameras, any previous knowledge of Derrens work, and other factors.
   Interesting Telly indeed, and I am as always a fan but not sound experiment to my mind, and certainly not an experiment that a psychologist would ever get ethical approval for.
   I do hope the audience were handled very carefully and went home with a real understanding of what they had been part of. Not 100%sure how I feel about this one… But as always food for thought and has sparked some good debate in my house!
5. Amazin show! Shows jus how ‘mob’ behavior is everywhere n in anyone. Mrs were nearly cryin 4 de fella! I knew there was goin 2 be a serious 1 at de end. Most of dem were quite mild, jus kinda annoyances, easily shrugged off until it really got mean 2wards end. Great show, can’t wait til next week!
6. Fascinating TV and disturbing to say the least. I’d be interested to know how many (if any) of the audience walked out and when.
7. I normally love Derren Brown but this was a little too contrived. Can’t help feeling WE were being manipulated at least as much as the studio audience. The timings on the footage were far too slick to really be a genuine live feed. Did you notice at the start the ‘girlfriend’ scratched her nose before Derren asked her to and he just thanked her and glossed over the obvious continuity error. (what invisible ‘spooks style tech’ was he actually supposed to be using to talk to them anyway?) I suspect the footage was actually pre-recorded in anticipation of the audiences obvious and blatently manipulated decisions. (e.g. the guy was set up as a cheating knob from the beginning). Oh and what was the point of the guy in the flat’s head camera when he was being filmed by crew in the flat anyway?
8. How appalled by themselves did the audience look! Bit scary though how easy it is to get swept away by the majority.
9. 1 of 3 I think…
   I would have to agree with the comments regarding the game show as a “fake” scenario. At all points during the show, the audience would still have felt that it was a) a game show – ie. not REALLY the police/kidnap etc, and b) under the control of Derren Brown (who himself was “Priming” through his manner of presentation – the gleeful condoning of “being a bit mean”…plus showing the “nasty” side of Chris – cheating on his gf – would have got the “female” B vote!)

   While I would have been interested in the stats of the SPEED of response for the “nasty” option as the show went on, and certainly there was no denying (unless in the case of stooges) that the audience were calling for some pretty unpleasant things to happen in Chris’s house.
10. 2 of 3
    I am not convinced this set out what Derren Brown was claiming to show.

    I personally suspect that even without masks, the same response would have been elicited because as mentioned earlier – Derren Brown could have been perceived as saying it was ok, and the thought process was one more of obedience (Milgram – if the person in charge was in the room, obedience was greater), similarly, Chris was remote (Milgram – if the “victim” is remote, there is less guilt in administering a “punishment”). Further Derren’s own introduction talked about audiences on X-factor – they aren’t masked and still behave poorly.
11. 3 of 3
    The masks may have played some part in the audience not speaking to each other to discuss “ooh, this is a bit mean”. (…and if those people calling out directions to Dave were not stooges – this isn’t unusual behaviour in a comedy club – why would it be so now?)

    While some of Derren Brown’s shows are phenomenal – and I also agree that the first 10 minutes were fantastic, this, and another one he did some time ago, I find a bit patronising – almost as if someone with the amount of talent Derren Brown has is choosing to revert to sensationalism while showing something that has been “proved” long ago – “Groupthink” (Sherrif), “Obedience” – remote victim/proximate experimenter (Milgra3m), “Conformity” (Asch and others), Mob mentality/power (Zimbardo)…
12. 4 of 4 (I lied)
    that anyone who has taken GCSE psychology should be aware of (not only in terms of the finding, but in terms of the problems with the experiments in the difficulty of separating confounding variables – which Derren Brown has also not improved on).

    If the point is to show how we, as a society, are still as capable of this kind of behaviour – did he really need to go further than the riots that swept London – it’s VERY evident that we no longer “love thy neighbour” in a very real life scenario.

    Derren Brown is an entertainer, and until these “experiments” – and some of the ones he did previously, I would have said he was one of the masters – he knows his stuff and uses it to enthrall us. However, he is not a teacher.
13. Brilliant piece of work.

    I was kind of meh, through out the show – until the end where I was almost in tears.

    Great job as always.
14. It would be interesting to see the statistics, however they can be deemed irrelevant sometimes. The majority may have been 51% in some instances, but it was still the majority; that is what counts. One or two more people voted for the positive than the negative, and that is what matters.
    Also, they aren’t stooges or anything! How many times can he say this until people stop questioning him?! They wouldn’t need to go through the debrief until AFTER the experiment; they participated as an audience, and in a way it was important that he didn’t see if any of them where ‘sheep’ and followed what people around them were doing, as this was about how being anonymous can affect our morals, therefore it is not full of flaws!
    Incredible Derren – genuinely. I was so shocked when he got hit by the car, I would have got up to see if he was okay like that lady!
15. We switched on at the start. My wife, who doesn’t normally follow Derren’s shows, said, “This looks like it might be OK.” 10 minutes in, she said, “this is not good to watch.” We switched off. I have read up on what happened in the rest of the show. It seems her instinct was right

    What Derren appears to have done is demonstrate what we already know from the popularity of many tv shows and magazines… people like watching others suffer, especially if they are rich, famous or just a little arrogant. It seems to be a destructive addiction in society that is being fed incessantly by editors and tv producers.

    If Derren’s show helps us learn from the negative aspects of such behaviour, then that will be good. But my feeling is it was more about entertainment than a social ‘wake up’ call.
16. Watched the programe last night-excellent as always- found it left myself and my partner unsettled, and certainly caused discussion. She’s a psychologist with more then a passing interest in peoples behaviour.I found the reaction of the audience fascinating -I believe I only heard one person ask if the victim was alright and did you notice how some, put the masks back on at the end!!!.I thought the “victims” behaviour, despite all that he ad thrown at him 1st class and a joy to watch .As some bloggers have said this idea is not new , read “Lord of the Flies” as an example . However once again Derren (bless his little cotton socks)and his team have used their skills to not only entertain, but also make us think and question.
17. Well, I was expecting something more but it was interesting as well. Just I can’t believe that so many people thought that it was him when he was run by a car. Then I immediately know that this part is only to fool the audience. They looked like they feel so rubbish and tricked after the show – I think they wanted to do something good later.

    Also, I think that because he cheated on his girlfriend and usually made many jokes on others – people felt more free to turn the jokes on him.

    But in the end they had a free choice – even if they wanted bad things to happen to him – for fun and entertain, they still know that it’s all real for him. And this is the part where it’s not good anymore.
18. Loved the show. I too wondered if the first shouter was a stooge , but as soon as they had “permission” to yell , I believe all if that was genuine. It’s just like any of these reality shows, theob is awful. However, I think there was more to chris than appeared. He took it all calmly… actor, or guy who’d been warned that he may be used for a show , and to go along with anything odd that happened to him? Of course the very fact I’m responding prob. means im falling into derrens evil plans!
19. utterly shocked by last nights show. it was interesting to see the behaviour of a crowd but towards the end I was feeling more and more that it had gone far enough. to a point where a group of people are willing for the guy believe he is going to lose his job and then to get him kidnapped, i was shocked. it shows how faceless people will act when those around them have a negative mindset.
20. One thing I can’t stand is someone being victimised (whether it be Domestic abuse, bullying, fake or reality) so I found this programme difficult to watch. At the end of the day, this is entertainment & I accept that the programme was what it was. However, I do think that the ‘experiment’ was forced down a particular route. Also, that the audience knew that whatever happens to Chris it will not go to far because it is a TV show – they are more likely to ‘see what happens’. I feel it could have been improved by

    a) Having two audiences, two similar but different people (different background stories – positive and negative)

    b) Derren playing a neutral role rather than influencing the audience (“the audience are playing havic” suggests a negative outcome).

    c) always stating the %
21. As a huge Derren Brown fan I was massively disappointed by last night’s show. Even if you hadn’t seen Orson Welles classic ‘F for Fake’ it didn’t take much to realise the 50 minutes of truth would be followed by a bunch of untruths once the 50 mins had expired. And the ‘experiment’ has been done many times before by psychologists – notably by Stanley Milgram who asked volunteers to administer pain to other volunteers to show what people might do if they were allowed/encouraged to. It was a way of explaining the collective horror that was Nazi Germany. But Derren didn’t credit either Orson Welles or Stanley Milgram in his version. This was poor, manipulative and derivative. I love Derren for what he does and for the way he thinks – but he’s better than this.
22. There is no doubt the experpiment was entertaining and clearly showed up a disturbing aspect of crowd psychology, however don’t give up on humanity yet. The experiment was not simply an observation of a crowd but an observation of manipulation by an authority figure. Derren and his team were obviously setting out to represent Chris poorly in the eyes of the crowd; as a man deserving of his come-uppance.

    Derren would laugh and act carefree when harmful choices were made and always displayed confidence. There can be no doubt that the audience members would have felt free to act foolishly not just because they were de-individualised and in a crowd, but because they trusted the Television industry to not allow anything harmful to happen (or for generous recompense to Chris to be made later).

    So yes, crowds are susceptible to foolishness but theye are also susceptible to great good; it depends on the skill of the leader.
23. Sorry, I love Derren but this didn’t work for me because it missed one basic premise. The audience all thought this was a game show, with a big star and filmed for the telly. In that context bad things do not “really” happen. They probably assumed that the further they took it, the bigger prize the guy would win at the end. That completely undermines any claim that it was a genuine demonstration of group anonymity. It was unfair on them to make them feel bad about it.
24. Incredible show I can’t say what hasn’t already been said about you or this show, other than…you could probably be the devil incarnate.
    Also, I can’t seem to find the sountrack by Nick foster and Ken Bolam, anyone know what the end credit song was?
25. I was also part of the audience for this show. It was totally incredible. When he got hit by the car I felt terrible! Lesson well learnt Derren, thank you 🙂
26. What are show you really got me 10 out of 10 best yet keep it up, cann’t wait for the next show willieballs
27. – didn’t think it worked, lame compared to normal DB. Telly isn’t real life, we know reality TV is mostly fake. So as I watched never with the thought “this is true”, nor “this is false” but rather accepting “I don’t know”. The questions : obvious the “nasty answer” was the most interesting; it wasn’t like the Standford expt, the audience didn’t come up with evil ideas & become a beying evil mob.
    Ooh a guy gets run over on live TV maybe yes, maybe no, it didn’t upset me.
    “Smash up the TV “. This is the first time with DB I thought “stooge”, et voila the producer had gloves and safety goggles with him..”fix” I say. Could have told him to find his stash of porn or something.
    Amazing, lots on Twitter think it’s live.
    “Everything you will see for the next 50minutes is unfaked” after 50 ?
28. With a couple of minor reservations I thought it was a terrific show. I agree that in the early rounds there was some knowing manipulation going on by emphasising he’d had an affair and was a bit of a practical joker, which led the audience to think “well he’s asking for it”
    That raises another question – at what stage did we get to decide the victim ‘deserves’ ritual humiliation. I almost went along with the first three rounds, but was brought up short by the footage of Chantelle being booed on Big Brother. I mean you might not like her, but does that justify the kind of pantomime villain treatment she got? And that was at the mild end of the scale.
    It made me think where do I get off playing armchair judge, jury and executioner on people I’ll never meet on TV or in the tabloids who I don’t approve of.
29. I was angry from the first choice. I imagined being randomly confronted by people angry with me about something I didn’t do, and that would be terrifying. What angered and sickened me most was the laughing. Supposedly, judging by the audience’s laughter, it’s funny when someone gets confronted by something embarrassing and scary. And that’s not too contrived, as it appears to be the idea behind MTV shows like Boiling Points and Disaster Date as well. Let’s have someone experience something extremely uncomfortable and laugh away, knowing it’ll all be ‘alright’ in the end when they’re told it was all just a ‘joke’.

    Note that the audience only stopped laughing when something irreversible happened, something outside the ‘joke’. Until then, he wasn’t a person, he was just an unfortunate clown.
30. As much as I enjoyed this, I have a few problems.

    I don’t think the audience would ever have thought Derren Brown would have a gameshow.
    I don’t think the audience were really sold that the events were live, even with the phone call.
    I really don’t think you can control things as elegantly as it appeared or that Chris wouldn’t have thought of Derren at some point over the course of the night.
    Control also wasn’t done very well in the studio where at some points it felt like the audience were primed to go for the negative option, such as the first one by ending the clip of Chris on the story about cheating on his girlfriend.
    The masks did nothing to introduce anonymity, where the whole experiment was more about conformity and obedience than mob psychology.
31. I liked it but theres a few issues I had with this episode.

    For starters Derren and crew paint the guy as negatively as possible, they never say anything good about him or show anything good about him. Its only natural you would want to be mean to someone when you’ve been told something bad about him.

    In one scene the producer shows us he has cleared his Internet History, whether he did or not is up for debate but after that the audience was probably thinking “this guy is suspicious” and after that how can you help but vote negatively against him? Thats the trap most people would fall for.

    I wonder if things would’ve turned out differently if they had said nothing but positive things about him.
32. wow go onto 4OD and go to the bit where hes run over. watch and listen to a woman say: woman: why are you filming still camera man: because im told to woman: i dont think you should be filming us someone has died camera man: yeah you voted for it derren you are a legend plz make more epic shows 🙂
33. Those saying it was flawed in that it’s impossible to create real mob mentality with people who know he isn’t really coming to any harm… They voted for him to be kidnapped. As soon as I saw that was an option I knew the show wouldn’t really do it – ‘fake’ or not, being dragged into a van by a masked gang would be pretty traumatising. Yet the audience still thought it would be a laugh.

    I must admit I’ve not been much of a fan of Derren for a while but I thought this show was excellent. That stuff really interests me, I loved the film ‘Die Welle’ too.
34. Absolutely incredible, as usual Mr Brown.

    I did laugh a lot at the comment which expressed primary surprise at how much Derren seemed to enjoy the gameshow hosts’s role. Its very true, and he would be very good at it. Seconded for blind date!

    Derren, you make the best television in my living memory. Please never give up pushing boundaries and demonstrating how little each and every one of us really knows about how we work and what makes us tick. You are a pioneer, a visionary and the fact that people like you exist and create such works of art is one of the main reasons i feel so happy to be alive.
35. Just caught the show on 4od. Thanks work for making me miss it. I think you are to be congratulated on such a well thought out concept and it’s execution was great. Same for The Assassin which I thought was your best “stunt” loosely termed in a while and I hope to see more great things for the rest of the series. But… You make comparisons to deindividuation in rioting, football hooliganism etc but those are absolute real life occurances. I felt that because it was a “gameshow” it was easier for the audience to go with the crowd and choose the negative options because overall there were no REAL consequences to their choices. Was Kris injured or hurt in anyway? Will there be lasting effects on him? No. But regardless the point is still well made and I enjoyed the show.
36. Great show! It was disturbing to watch – as intended. It would be interesting to see interviews of the audience members – victims/subjects – immediately after the show and then later when they’d had time to rationalise their actions. This is an excellent series – can’t wait until next Friday.
37. I still can’t believe it… how the audience could be so ‘sickened’ by a bit of broken finger nail.
38. A few thoughts:

    1. You got Gaddafi’s army right there!
    2. “It’s all in good fun” they said, until the guy got run over.
    3. Those guys in the audience will never play a prank on anyone again ever.
    4. The question “why do people do bad things” (usually ending in “to me”) has now been answer, at least to your audience: it’s the Mask’s fault (Stanley Ipkiss never hurt anybody).

    People tend to forget the bad things that can come out of so called “fun”. As they say, “hindsight is always 20/20”.
39. My dear friends, regardless whether “Kris” deserved any of the the treatment received, the bottom line is shocking. Looking back at the program, we see the gradual process of not only deindividuation of the audience, but a total lack of morals and a slow social regression. The last 15 minutes proved very dramatic, with the audience spurting out the most distressful of commands, behaving like apes. I would bet good money that none of the audience would behave in such a manner if given the same choices, but this time had to answer individually and non-anonymously.
40. OK Chris was definitely in on it, the baseball bat and the TV was set up, someone in the audience was a stooge shouting for it to be smashed up, how else did they get him a new TV so fast? How can everyone else in the bar and shop hear what Derren is saying but not Chris? Very convenient that he had wiped his internet history too… Chris was a good actor, however his work colleague was terrible!

    All that said, it did not spoil my enjoyment of the show as it was the audience who were being controlled not Chris, so it doesn’t really matter whether he was in on it or not. I thought the final 10 minutes was some of the best TV I have seen!! And it was great to see him do something that was all psychology without and magic tricks. How does he keep coming up with these ideas?? Very Clever!
41. Thank you Darren, for what you have done in the 2 experiments.. They are real eye openers..
    I really hope and wish people would change their thinking and behave better in the future.
42. I though last night’s show was flawed. The audience knew deep down they were on a game show and that any negative paths the subject took would never result in a permanent consequence.
43. I notice a number of comments requesting access to the data. The pattern of sequential voting relating to each individual could be informative. Though if permitted, might it reveal that we’re the experiment? Beings beginning to questioning their own perceptions.
    In which case the final vote might have been:
    a) Continued existence.
    b) The alternative.
44. I just think that this was a brilliant show. Here are some observations…
    1. Derren himself was all playful and smiling, even when the most extreme options were presented, creating a “hey what the hell, it’s just a game after all!” atmosphere and thus pushing the audience to make the unpleasant choice easier.
    2. About the TV thing… Yes the bat and the goggles suggest that this might be staged but think about it… You just place a bat next to a tv set and show it to a “charged” audience, it’s a matter of time until someone shouts “smash the damn thing!”. Then you just have a new set ready for replacement.
    (to be continued…)
45. Absolutely blown away by the “The Game show ”. I’ve been moaning and cringing for years over the amount of so called ‘entertainment shows’ which take so much pleasure from humiliating and pushing to breaking point someone who has agreed to go on their show. I find it so repellent but most people tell me that “they deserve it” which just leaves me cold and disillusioned by the whole human race. Given the right circumstances we can all ‘act out’ in a cruel and evil way but bloody hell do we need to see it every night of the week on TV.
    It must have taken a lot of courage to make this show, so, well done everyone who took part (especially the audience) I’ve always thought that for a gay guy Derren you certainly do have ‘balls’ proving ‘yet again’ that not all gays are sissies and not all sissies are gay xx
46. 3. About the browser history… Actually I was surprised that a bunch of technicians (and the host of course) didn’t think of the most obvious reason… Guys, not everyone uses Internet Explorer! Chris might be just using another browser, it’s that simple.
    4. The whole point of this show was not Chris. It was the realization that a bunch of average people are capable of doing evil things “just for fun”, but in order to ensure that we would be brought to this powerful finale, at least that is my opinion, one has to be sure of only one thing… Voting. So I am not sure wether these people actually voted (as a whole) in favor of B outcomes, or the voting results were just… well… pretty staged, but I am sure of one thing, either way it was all worth it in the end.
47. U’ve been my idol for 7 years now, i went to see u in your new tour ‘Svengali’ i hav all your dvd’s and almost all your books. And just when i thought nothing could get any better, u pull of a spectacular show. U are amazing and a fine actor 😀
48. To all you who are so concerned for the psychological well-fair of Chris that you are rejoicing in the horror and guilt experienced by all the individual audience members I think you may need to reflect on your own use of group identity! The audience members are arguably bigger victims of this whole event than Chris, although the complicity of his ‘friends’ might prove hard for him to deal with. If this isn’t a set up I cannot see how or why anyone would go ahead with this program, It hasn’t demonstrated anything we didn’t already know and is so full of holes it could never be used to add to the body of evidence that already exists on obedience and shared responsibility. I wonder if the producers are ‘sharing responsibility’ for the psychological torment of their victims.
49. Brilliant! Loved it. I actually liked it more than The Assassin. Lots of fun and shocking stuff. “Fantastic arse” HAHAHAHA! You naughty man, lol. xxxxxxxxxx Can’t get enough of you, roll on next Friday! ; )
50. Wow, I’m so glad I managed to catch it on 4od just now, that really was one of the most thought-provoking entertainment programs I have ever seen. While watching it, I was thinking to myself what decision I would have made for each of the dilemmas, and I can honestly say, I wouldn’t have chosen the “nasty” option for any after the first couple. I do not doubt that what happened was genuine up until the kidnapping, Deren Brown is so intelligent, he doesn’t need staging. For those of you saying that the audience will be scarred, ultimately, they were making the decisions, in a crowd with a mask on or not, it really shows how we have lost touch with our morals. It really needed the shock-factor of Chris getting hit by a car to really make people question their behavior, continued…