Derren Brown: Miracles For Sale (Channel 4 25 April 2011)

Any Derren Brown experience is always to be savoured and in Miracles For Sale he tackles one of his bete noirs – the world of faith healing. Brown goes undercover to investigate the reality behind the faith healing phenomenon in America and the belief in faith-inspiring miraculous recoveries. With the cameras in hot pursuit, Derren faces his toughest project yet, going in search of an unsuspecting member of the British public prepared to adopt the guise of a pastor and miracle worker.

His chosen one then has six months to learn the trade and flourish across the pond as a convincing pastor. The final phase of the volunteer’s extraordinary challenge sees them attempt to perform faith healing miracles live in Texas, but will Derren’s new recruit be accepted as a faith healer or cast away as fake healer? Is the belief in divine intervention really justified, or will Derren expose the industry as one giant hoax?

One of the really exciting things about Brown is that he puts in the hard yards, this is not some quick variety special this is a six months in the making experiment and whether it succeeds or fails is not even really down to Brown but to how gullible the public are!

It was in fact a typically brilliant Brown show with a powerful ending but one was eventually left with the impression that Nathan didn’t actually achieve a great deal on a grand scale but on a personal scale then he could definitely start a new career as a professional faith healer debunker.

production details
UK | Channel 4 – Objective Productions

RUNNING TIME: 90 Minutes | NUMBER OF EPISODES: 1 | AIRDATE: Monday 25 April 2011 @ 9.00pm

PRODUCER: David Vallance | EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Derren Brown, Anthony Owen, Andrew Newman, Shirley Jones | DIRECTOR: Simon Dinsell