Derren Brown is a great big cheating liar. Or so my old mucker Rod Liddle reckoned last week in his Spectator blog. Derren Brown’s Apocalypse was ‘clearly, demonstrably, faked’, declared Rod. Well, I guess that settles it then. Or does it? First some background for those of you who missed it. (Though my advice for those of you who did is: stop reading now and watch both episodes immediately on Channel 4’s 4oD catch-up site.) Derren Brown’s Apocalypse (Channel 4, last Friday) was — or, pace Rod, purported to be — an extraordinarily bold TV experiment. Part horror movie, part therapy session, its aim was to turn around the life of a selfish, boorish waster called Steven using the novel method of persuading him that he was one of the few humans left alive in a world taken over by zombies.
If this sounds implausible I’d quite agree. But not impossible, as anyone familiar with Brown’s meticulous working methods would know.
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