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yeh. I was impressed with the scratch card as well. all the other effects I knew but this was different from what I know. Hmmm????

naychandler1 wrote:

Pagali Zonda wrote:I thought it was decent. Got a bit bored towards the end but I liked the first trick a lot (the one with the emotions). Is this effect marketed?

As Peter Nardi was one of the magic consultants for the show i think you'll find that a lot of the stuff seen on the programme can be bought from his shop... but check out this http://www.alakazam.co.uk/product-Blind ... Trick.html the principle is used here for the effect that you liked - obviously it can be found elsewhere on other magic establishments!!

Cheers that looks good. Just swap the cards with photos and it'll be great. Doesn't seem quite as impressive with colours, but the principles the same. Cheers

It was a good show for Channel 5. Best since Whittle. Which itself was a clone of Everybody's Equal. Channel 5 and decent original programming coexisting is THAT rare.

It wasn't perfect, but it went well.

Before casting judgement, remember, this is Channel 5...

I loved some of the effects - but the game show format basically boils down to - here'.s a magic trick, do you reckon I can do it

There may be the nucleus of a winning idea here - but I don't think this is the finished article, they needed to think about how it was actually going to work a bit more.

I really liked the informal 'bar' setting, and I don't know why we had to have the money at all. If the effects were presented with enough style, it would have been just as interesting to get volunteers from the audience, and do some mind bending.

What I was uncomfortable with was the apparent randomness of which effects were meant to be 'impossible' and which 'possible'.

Obviously magicians could work out which of the effects might be using a magical principle - even if they didn't exactly know the method. But, it seemed like a simple guess for the contestants and it felt a little 'smug' and I'm sure we all agree that spectators should not appear foolish.

I'm not sure the concept works that well - but ratings will show I suppose - you never can tell, can you?

Well my main two problems with it,

Firstly (and this is a major problem for mentalism in general) if it's supposed to be psychological, eg. you can feel the emotions of a photograph through an envelope, then essentially you've just explained something scientific to me that I didn't know - that's not magic, it's like 'Oh I didn't know that?'
Isn't the whole idea of magic that you make things which we know are impossible, possible? 'What how did you do that?'

We put the audience on the knife edge, that's impossible, but I've just seen you do it. This show seems to be saying, 'actually that isn't impossible, see?'

Secondly, If it's supposed to be magic and not psychology, then anything should be possible, but instead we get 'actually I can't do that one.'

Finally, didn't anyone else think it was a little slow and boring - Mentalism tries to be all grown up and sophisticated, but it's just a bit bleeerghhh...
There are exceptions, but with this show I just thought it was too stilted.

and envelopes!! - why does everything have to be in envelopes, you're supposed to be reading minds, not envelopes!

Saying that, the I may watch next week, I may not, I thought there were some nice presentational hooks and concepts, even if I didn't like the entire way they were presented as a whole, for example - OOTW linked with synethsesia (sp?).

These days, anything that screams out as being mentalism based is automatically going to be compared to Derren by the watching public so I think that to tone the content down into something that's more light and entertaining was the right way to go.

I enjoyed the show but will have a better judgement after a few weeks. We're always moaning that there's not enough of this type of material on TV but when something gets aired we're the most critical.

My lay friends that watched were all saying "did you see" and "how did he do that" and to them it didn;t come across as a magic show but more of a game of very skillful chance which is what I think the show was trying to achieve.

There were some really interesting parts and the audience on TV seemed to be genuinely absorbed in what was going on. My only ctitacism was that I didn't feel that it needed the guy to hold the envelope as proof of whether it could be done or not. That didn;t seem to work too well for me.

Otherwise I enjoyed it all.

dat8962 wrote: I didn't feel that it needed the guy to hold the envelope as proof of whether it could be done or not. That didn;t seem to work too well for me.

Yes I agree, that and the psychic woman seemed unnecessary.

With regard to the bullseye one though.... can someone explain why it was impossible? Seems to me that the map could have had only say 200 different places on it and they filmed him in 200 places and then whereever the dart lands they can unpause at that location. No?

dat8962 wrote:My only ctitacism was that I didn't feel that it needed the guy to hold the envelope as proof of whether it could be done or not. That didn;t seem to work too well for me..

If he didn't have that guy there, then if he failed something that was possible he could simply claim it was impossible. I'm sure people don't want to go to court over "Fixing" a gameshow...

DenmarkKilo wrote:

dat8962 wrote:My only ctitacism was that I didn't feel that it needed the guy to hold the envelope as proof of whether it could be done or not. That didn;t seem to work too well for me..

If he didn't have that guy there, then if he failed something that was possible he could simply claim it was impossible. I'm sure people don't want to go to court over "Fixing" a gameshow...

Hi Kilo, this is right on the money: if the adjudicator had not been there with the envelope, there were definitely a few points where the punters would have mutinied!

Phil, i think that the point being raised was, you dont need a man standing there holding the envelope.

If you were to have something suspended over the table, on which is hooked the envelope, hanging there like a sword of Damocles, you would of had a stronger Image.

But you wouldnt have the possibility that the thing was switched in to suit the outcome.

The man holding the envelope will probably be used as a assistant as the show goes on, as he was in the dog tag trick.

I think telling the audience that he is the 'adjudicator' rather than an assistant is quite a good cover.

Dale, the idea was originally to have a static sort of envelope, but for whatever reason it was decided to go with an independent adjudicator. I think it was thought that there should be this sense that there is an independent person on set to ensure that everything is above board.

On that note, I guess its worth mentioning that the adjudicator genuinely is just that, an independent adjudicator: he actually works for the insurance company and given that the game is for money it would be illegal to claim he was independent and actually have him fiddling with the envelope.

He, the envelope and the red box end-game are all genuine. The challenges are all pre-determined as to whether they are possible or impossible, there is no funny business and again, it would be against the law I think to cheat the punters that way. (I'm not a lawyer though, so I only know what I'm told!)

DenmarkKilo wrote:

dat8962 wrote:My only ctitacism was that I didn't feel that it needed the guy to hold the envelope as proof of whether it could be done or not. That didn;t seem to work too well for me..

If he didn't have that guy there, then if he failed something that was possible he could simply claim it was impossible. I'm sure people don't want to go to court over "Fixing" a gameshow...

I see the point here, but the way he defined possible was that he could do it anytime anywhere, so if he failed at an effect it would be, by his definition, impossible, no matter what it said in the envelope.

The contestants are basically making a 50/50 guess, they have no frame of reference to make their prediction. And this robs it of any tension. And when you find out, there is no satisfaction, because it doesn't explain why it is impossible or not.

When you watch a quiz show like 'The million pound drop', for example, it engrosses because you can try to work out the answer for yourself, and then be satisfied or surprised by the actual answer. This doesn't here, so as a game show it just doesn't fulfil the brief.

As a magic show it has lots of the right elements IMO, a host with potential, good effects, and a novel setting. Just needs some tweaking.