Magic – Well Eye Never

Oxford – Art, Academia, Jools & Jimmy

Last weekend I had a nice little getaway in the beautiful historic city of Oxford, which I’ve never visited before. I spent the daylight hours visiting a museum and going on a walking tour, while in the evenings I attended a concert and a stand-up comedy gig, so I made good use of my time there. None of it is sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy this review of what I got up to!

Derren Brown Reviews – TV Specials

Following on from my previous post about Derren Brown’s various TV series, this time I’m revisiting his TV specials, including his televised stage shows. I own 4 specials and 5 stage shows on DVD, but the rest haven’t been released on disc. Most of these shows are on All4 as well though, and some are on Derren’s Youtube channel (in full along with many shorter clips), as he generously posted a lot of shows online during the Covid pandemic. So I’ve been able to rewatch all of them recently in one way or another.

Derren’s specials are all one-off shows (or occasionally two-parters) focused on a very specific subject, event or person. Nearly all of them were an hour long when originally broadcast (so around 45-50 minutes without adverts), with a few exceptions that lasted 90 minutes (so around 70 minutes without commercials). They’re always thought-provoking, and a few of the darker ones resulted in complaints (and thus extra publicity) from people who didn’t understand what he was doing or trying to achieve. But I find them all fascinating and fun to watch in any case. Likewise his stage shows are all amazing to watch, and I’ve grouped them together in one section at the end as I don’t need to go into heavy detail about them.

As mentioned before, none of this is sponsored, I’m just writing about them as a fan. And there are a few spoilers in here if you haven’t seen the shows before, but then it’s pretty common knowledge that Derren’s experiments pretty much always succeed as intended. The thrill is from seeing how he does it and the impact it has on those involved. So I hope you enjoy my descriptions and reviews.

Derren Brown Reviews – TV Series

Having finally seen Derren Brown live for the first time recently, it’s been a good excuse to rewatch a lot of his old TV & stage shows. I own many of them on DVD, but there are also several programmes available on All4, plus he has his own Youtube channel where he generously uploaded some full episodes during the Covid pandemic and has lots of other clips too. Some of his stuff I haven’t seen for a long time, so it’s been a lot of fun to revisit it.

So here’s the first part of a special double bill of descriptions and reviews for Halloween weekend, and here I’m going to describe and review the various TV series that I’ve been rewatching on DVD and online. Naturally there are some spoilers in here, but after all this time I don’t think that matters – even when you know the outcome of some of his shows, given that he nearly always succeeds in his aims, it’s still amazing to see him at work. And none of it’s sponsored, I just wanted to write about it as a fan. So I hope you enjoy!

September 2022 Favourites

Well, what a month this has been! When I published my August Favourites at the start of September, I had just left my first job due to my redundancy, and Liz Truss had just become Prime Minister. But then 2 days after I’d made that post, the ultimate career change took place at the top of our Royal Family, and normal life in the UK was disrupted for the best part of a fortnight as a result. I’ve written a separate post saying farewell to Her Majesty The Queen and reviewing the coverage, as it’s not really suitable for a Favourites post and there was quite a lot to talk about.

Apart from that though, and despite my redundancy, I’ve still been pretty busy this month. I’ve attended a Derren Brown show and a couple of tribute concerts, listened to an audiobook I got for my birthday, and enjoyed new episodes of my favourite comedies on TV once the schedules had returned to normal. So there are still plenty of nicer things to mention in this post and the short video I’ve made to go with it, none of which is sponsored or gifted, and I hope you enjoy my latest roundup!