UK TV PREMIERE: David Tennant Appears In New Derren Brown Show - Pushed To The Edge Tonight



Look out for some familiar faces among the supporting cast of Derren Brown's latest TV show: David Tennant, Stephen Fry and Martin Freeman will all be making appearances during the illusionist's most ambitious project to date.

In Pushed To The Edge (Channel 4, Tuesday 12th January, 9pm), Derren Brown explores compliance and social influence and whether an ordinary person can be manipulated into pushing someone else off a roof to their apparent death. Unwitting 29-year old Chris Kingston is manipulated through a number of social situations, through peer pressure, authority, doing favours and finding common ground with others, to see if he is capable of committing the ultimate act. The experiment takes place at the gala launch of a fictitious charity called Push.

Derren has involved special effects teams and stunt co-ordinators as well as about 70 actors to help him set up the scenario and to see how far he could take his experiment. And as a gala launch needs celebrity guests, he has even managed to recruit a few friends to show their faces at the fake event - which is where David, Martin and Stephen come in. 

The whole event took over four months of planning and was filmed over the course of a weekend. Derren explains that although the experiment visits some very dark places it was important that the subject was not left thinking that they were a bad person; the purpose was to discover how easily the need to comply could override an individual's moral code.

"The nature of the whole journey is done in a way to make sure that ultimately it’s a positive thing for them. Within five minutes of the end happening, they were fine," he told Channel 4. "Subjects, over the years and going back across quite a few shows, are always in a very positive place at the end of things. We aren’t in the business of doing horrible things to people and then laughing at them. This certainly isn’t about who’s a bad person or a good person. We all have a strong moral sense. The point of this situation that we move them into is what happens when a clear discrepancy is created between what you know is right and what you feel you have to do. That’s really what this is about."

Watch some preview clips from the show here.

David Tennant has previously appeared on 2 episodes of Derren Brown's Channel 4 show Trick Or Treat in 2008. 

With thanks to Channel 4

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