The anonymous game show.

Was rather watchable until they got to the bedroom (understood the concept and what was going on) but it clicked what the real finale would be

I don't know if I was the only one but for the vast majority of them I wanted him to get the nice result not the bad, same with the warm up 'act'

I'm surprised no one left half way through

All in all it was only really a scaled up collective consciousness version of the Milgram experiment, he reproduced the experiment previously too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment


Is the only thing that he has to go off is a Psychology degree and a backlog of 'tests' into the human psyche to show people? All he needed was someone likeable and passive enough to go along with whatever happened and a mass of people and masks

I've always found him irrepressibly dull

I really liked it.

I know the whole point was de-indivuation (or whatever he called it) and I can see how it worked. i.e. put people in an anonymous group (regardless of the masks, people voting on a system like that are anonymous) and they will find it easier to do bad things and cause harm to other people.

The same thing happens to a lesser extent on a lot of talk shows/games shows. Graham Norton will regularly do "bad" things to people with the full support of the audience. Sometimes the audience will encourage it too. This is what makes me think the "set up" was completely real. I.e. the people in the audience really did think they were in a game show. Also I believe the guy didn't know what was going on.

One thing I have realised with this series is that it isn't about magic shows or misdirection or showmanship or illusions or manipulation etc...

This series is about him trying out known or theorised effects on people.

The first show wasn't about getting someone to shoot Stephen Fry it was about seeing whether the people who believe that Sirhan Sirhan was "programmed" to assassinate Robert Kennedy were possibly right (or at least that what they were saying could actually be done).

I think this series is a lot more about Derren just trying things out to see what happens than previous ones where he was trying to play tricks on people and mystify people.

I think the coin flipping thing at the beginning of this show was a bit disjointed. It didn't really fit with the theme of the rest of the show.

The difference with the Milgram experiment is that they are being TOLD to do something bad by someone in authority. In this they had a clear choice of good or bad and they went for the bad choice. Clearly influenced by a number of things, not least the "profile" of the guy given at the beginning of the show.