DEBORAH ROSS: Forget loo roll… Derren shows we’ve run out of TV

Derren Brown: 20 Years Of Mind Control 

Sunday, Channel 4 

Rating:

Albion 

Sunday, BBC Four 

Rating:

The time has arrived: we are running out of TV. All anybody thought about hoarding at the outset of the pandemic was toilet paper. And bleach. No one thought: but what if we run out of Holby City? What if Line Of Duty is put on hold? We are paying for that now with a schedule full of repeats and repeated repeats or shows built around archive material such as We Love Gavin & Stacey or Richard Ayoade’s Travel Man highlights or Location, Location, Location: 20 Years And Counting or, for the especially desperate, perhaps, Emmerdale Family Trees.

Anyway, one such archival show this week was Derren Brown: 20 Years Of Mind Control. This was a spool through the psychological illusionist’s – that’s what he calls himself – greatest hits but, fair play, it did also include a new illusion and Brown being interviewed at home. However, as the programme was written and produced by Brown and his long-time collaborator Andrew O’Connor, the questioning was not along the lines of: ‘How do you sleep at night knowing you convinced an otherwise decent person to think they’ve pushed someone to their death?’ Or: ‘Would you say you have a sadistic streak?’

Instead, a typical question was: ‘In a way your specials are a whole genre of TV that didn’t exist before?’ Not exactly challenging. It may also be that Derren Brown being at the helm meant Derren Brown didn’t ask Derren Brown: ‘Desperate as we are, do we still really need 130 minutes of this?’ Or it could be that Derren Brown did ask Derren Brown, and Derren Brown’s response was: ‘Yes, Derren. We do.’

Actually, the most satisfying aspect was seeing Brown’s (£5 million East End) home, which is suitably maximalist and phantasmagorical with cabinets of curiosities and creepy former props situated all over the place, and even a wonderfully gothic secret staircase. I kept half-expecting a batch of automata to all kick off at once, but maybe I’ve seen Sleuth (the Laurence Olivier/Michael Caine film version) too many times. The show wasn’t at all biographical, despite the fact we had 9pm-11.10pm to play with, so weren’t exactly pressed for time. There was no mention of his childhood or how he first got into psychological illusioning, which could have offered an insight into the man. There was no insight. I suppose that if you make programmes about yourself and you wish to leave yourself out of it, you can.

Instead, it was The Work, and, admittedly, he is brilliant at what he does. You’re always left scratching your head. How? How? How did he do that? But here, alas, we didn’t even properly see what he did. Once we got onto the darker illusions – and the specials that may constitute a genre of TV that didn’t exist before – and shows like The Heist (otherwise law-abiding people persuaded to commit a bank robbery) or Pushed To The Edge (three people persuaded to push a man off a building to his apparent death), we didn’t understand how the participants might have been persuaded. Because it was a highlights reel, we got none of the preamble that could explain that. I had to look it all up afterwards (so that’s more time I’m never going to get back). And I know it’s a bore but I would have liked something on the ethics.

Brown said those involved in Pushed To The Edge, for example, found it ‘exhilarating’, and this was confirmed by a participant who said it had been ‘a massively positive experience’ and had made her ‘a better, stronger person’. Um. Why? If I thought I had it in me to throw someone off a building, I wouldn’t necessarily think of myself as a better person. I might be quite traumatised. Most peculiar. Unless, of course, only people with lovely things to say were allowed on this show. About Derren Brown. That Derren Brown was in charge of.

One of the boons of the pandemic is that we’re seeing more theatre. That is, filmed theatre. Filmed theatre always feels like filmed theatre rather than television – it’s the differing acting style and more static nature of it – but at least it means you don’t actually have to go the theatre, which is an exorbitantly expensive faff. So it’s good to stay home for it, and Albion was terrific.

Filmed in February at London’s Almeida Theatre, this was written by Mike ‘Doctor Foster’ Bartlett and directed by Rupert Goold. It stars a startlingly magnificent Victoria Hamilton – truly, she will blow you away – as a successful businesswoman who quits London for a country house in Oxfordshire, although it’s not the house that’s important. It comes with a series of gardens she’s determined to restore. It’s essentially, I think, about wanting to revert to a glorious past that maybe never was… Brexit-style? It’s sometimes funny – Audrey ruffles a lot of feathers locally – but mostly it is extremely powerful and involving, with a wonderful cast of secondary characters.

Possibly, this is even up there with Emmerdale Family Trees. As it happens, I’ve yet to be that desperate, but when I am I’ll let you know.