Ofcom has received more than a dozen complaints about illusionist Derren Brown's latest Channel 4 show, in which he coerced three members of the public into pushing a man off a roof.
Darren Brown: Pushed To The Edge, which aired last night, aimed to show the power of compliance by convincing members of the public into following orders as part of an elaborate hoax.
Among the four people he tricked was Chris Kingston, the 29-year-old co-owner of a printing company, who believed he was attending a charity auction. After small compliance tests, such as incorrectly labelling sausage rolls as vegetarian, he witnessed the charity's main donor "dying" and was persuaded to hide the body.
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Later told that the donor was actually alive and furious, Chris was urged to push him off the roof. He refused - but the three other test subjects were persuaded to commit "murder".
"Viewers knew the whole set-up was a fictional stunt, but it didn't make the show any easier to watch," said Daisy Wyatt at The Independent.
The show was branded "manipulative" and "cruel" on social media, with several people expressing concern for the mental well-being of Brown's targets.
Julia Raeside at The Guardian was unconvinced. "The end result is so hard to credit, it leaves me thinking that for all the fun of the set-up, this may be a push too far," she wrote.
The farce of the scenario made the ending all the more inappropriate, added Raeside. "He needs to decide, which is it? A knowing and often funny entertainment – or a serious psychological experiment in which real people experience horrific things for our and their edification."
Anna Leszkiewicz at the New Statesman suggested the elaborate scenario also made the principle seem less relevant to everyday life and "slightly too far-fetched" to worry about.
"The sheer spectacle of the programme made it clear that this was pure entertainment. Yes, this is a fine and noble endeavour in itself, but it makes the stress the participants went through seem more distasteful, and the show's own mission statement less sincere," she said. Brown's closing warning - that we are all "profoundly susceptible to this kind of influence" and can "push back" - therefore felt "hollow".
