Review of Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge

The popular British illusionist and mentalist has always made great television shows and specials, he is so clever influencing his subjects and audiences, and this special (with almost a purpose) was no exception. Derren Brown presents this one-off special which sees whether one member of the public can be influenced, or coerced, without their knowledge that they are being filmed or manipulated, into pushing someone off a roof to their apparent death. The concept is that people were auditioned to take part in the Derren Brown experiment, only those that were susceptible to follow what others were doing or unknowingly following a pattern, if not order, were chosen for the experiment, they chose four final candidates. Chris Kingston was the candidate chosen for the final programme, without his knowledge, the other three people chosen from the auditions and their actions are shown in small part later. Basically Chris is attending an event for a fictional charity called "Push", all people at the event are actors, one actor playing a wealthy charity donor, Chris follows his small requests, this will build up to see how susceptible he is to follow tougher decisions. The big challenge is when the fake charity donor has a heart attack, and he is apparently dead, in fact the corpse is a life-size body created by a highly skilled special effects team, creating a highly convincing body, Chris is made by the fake director to hide the body and take the place of the donor. The drama builds up as the fake event goers get close to finding the body, and Chris is pressured into continuing to go along with whatever he is told, but he is obviously wanting to do the right thing. Finally it comes to the biggest challenge, the fake donor is in fact alive and on the roof ranting that he will tell the police of their actions, Chris is with a number of people discussing what will happen to the charity and themselves if the donor speaks out, and Chris has to decide if he will push the man off the roof to stop any consequences occurring. In the end, Chris refuses to do so, and this is when Derren Brown finally reveals himself, and that the whole thing was a social and psychological experiment, the other three finalists on the other hand did go ahead and did what most people would do, after all they were put through, and push the man off the building. But this experiment was not to see who would push the man off the building and who was easiest to influence, it was essentially to show the audience watching that not everyone has to follow order, not everyone has to do what they are told if it breaks with their morals or social conformity, people can make a change. To be honest, I was only fairly interested by the final message of the programme, I was just gripped to see how far the innocent ordinary bloke would be pushed with the highly entertaining difficult circumstances and situations he is put through, it made laugh and cringe in equal measure, a highly watchable television show. Very good!