Compliance order

Never a man tortured by self-doubt, Derren Brown introduced his latest special Pushed to the Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday) as a fascinating psychological experiment about the dangers of ‘social compliance’ — our willingness to do what authority figures ask, however morally dubious. In fact, much of what followed was a weird, and itself rather morally dubious, mix of Candid Camera, Fawlty Towers and something pretty close to entrapment. But from time to time, it also proved, annoyingly enough, a fascinating psychological experiment about the dangers of social compliance.

The central aim was fairly straightforward: to see if a member of the public could be persuaded to shove a stranger off a high roof. The set-up, though, was anything but — involving, among other things, 70 actors, two Hollywood special-effects artists and the creation of a fictional charity. And all the time, Brown directed events with a sadistic glee that he tried hard to disguise as a high-minded concern with human weakness.