Thursday at 10pm on Five.
Mindreader and illusionist Philip Escoffey challenges members of the public to determine if things he can claim he can do are possible or impossible. Each dilemma is worth an increasing amount of cash.
When I first heard about the show I said (and you can look this up if you want) that it’s basically going to be a big money version of that thing Derren Brown did on Mind Control with the money in the envelopes where he tries to persuade people to pick the wrong envelope. Well, this does indeed appear to be the show’s endgame. The best strategy will probably be ignore everything he says and just pick a briefcase on some sort of ibble-dibble system, but there we are.
Right, is this Paul off of The Mole Series 2on Impossible?
No, false alarm.
Very boring so far. It’s no Derren Brown, is it!
I certainly don’t think Escoffey is as compelling a character as Brown (which is important), but as someone who doesn’t really study magic I’m intrigued by some of the tricks.
It’s not brilliant, but it’ll do. For 5, that’s a compliment.
It would work better if he acted a bit more adversarial – as a guy trying to trick them he’s a little too friendly.
Mmm, I’m sort of enjoying this (I’m properly perplexed by some of it) but I think having it all close-up in the same setting is irritating me a bit.
It would certainly help if the scale of the magic matched the size of the cash value.
The adjudicator is a bit pointless – he could just go off set and switch envelopes. Why can’t the envelope stay in shot all the time? Or even give it to the participants to put into their pocket?
This end bit is quite entertaining, but as I said it’s been done before.
1) Why are they using specialists in a straight 50/50 gamble decision?
2) The specialist is a psychic. Meh.
Part of the trick I suppose –
The other thing is that when something is impossible, it actually feels a bit disappointing and the set-up is a bit of a waste of everyone’s time.
It’s almost a shame they’ve put a game element in, really.
It’s a sort of mmmm show really, would watch it again but I don’t think it’s unmissable by any means.
From TV’s Paul Brassey: Impossible got 0.5m.
Now you see the audience, now you don’t.
That’s quite a lot for Channel 5, isn’t it? Though I tend to think any audience you couldn’t reasonably fit into an average-sized community hall is quite a lot for Channel 5.
Apparently it’s the lowest rating in that slot for the channel in quite some time. I think it deserved better despite its faults.
Meanwhile, Nickelodeon has commissioned a UK version of “Camp Orange”, a sort of Escape From Best Of Raven Friends Island thing. But if it’s not on Freeview, it’s not proper telly, so meh.
I’ll be honest, I expected the show to be more like the endgame throughout – a sort of Chan Canasta gameshow, if people know what I mean. That would probably get old fast though.
There is a connection between Derren and this show though – it looks like some key members of the “Trick of the Mind” crew were involved – Debbie Young and Stefan Stuckert.
No! Don’t mention “Chan Canasta gameshow”. The apparent discovery of such a thing was one of my less glorious and more erroneous bits of research. On the other hand, I think it’s made up for by the triumph of uncovering “Win a Mink”.
Well, now it exists, kind of. Here’s how the Chan Canasta one worked in my head, based on the Impossible trailer.
Effectively, you’d use a number of contestants during the show, possibly selecting a ‘table’ in the club via some random device or Graham Norton-esque ‘stay standing if…’ question. At which point one of the stunts would be performed for an arbitrary amount of money (smaller than currently), make the right possible/impossible choice and get the cash.
By all means have your end game as now, but perhaps make it a voluntary gamble of the original prize money. You wouldn’t be able to directly use researched info to influence people, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary anyway.
As I type this, I realise I’ve basically welded magic tricks onto Let’s Make a Deal, so not as original as I thought.
Finally caught up with this show, and I found it intriguing, but probably not from the angle that the producers intended. Wash away all of the piffle and misdirection in the setup, and it ends up being a question of “Can this magic trick be technically done”, something that I found quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the piffle and misdirection were supposed to be the selling points. Penn & Teller’s Fool Us got this spot on, letting us indulge in both the thrill of the trick and the technical skill behind it.
Escoffey is not bad, really. Seemed a bit stilted at times, like he wanted to get through his shtick without much interruption. I did like that he tried to position himself (outside of the endgame, anyway) as more the impartial observer than the antagonist.
And the Endgame? Less said the better. Serves the purpose, I guess, though I personally tire of the Vizzini-esque pretzel logic that these setups will inevitably result in.
One more note – I love the informal set. It works very well with the overall feel of the show. Informal sets don’t get much love in the genre (I can’t remember one being used since Smush in the USA on the, er, USA Network).
Overall, a mild positive. I’d watch again, though it wouldn’t be appointment viewing.
I’m enjoying this more this week, or at least I’m warming to Escoffey.
I think it’s a shame that whether something is possible or impossible feels a bit arbitrary. Who can say whether something deemed impossible could be done by someone with a different set up?
Oof, this is down to 399k last night. I can’t help but feel that’s a bit harsh.
How much of this is due to the show (which deserves more than this) and how much is purely due to this being on Channel 5? Thus, extrapolating my thoughts, what ratings are we expecting Big Brother to get?
I’ve read on DS that it’s being pulled the week after next. Sad.
I would expect Big Brother to do a bit better.