Penn & Teller: Fool Us

This is wonderful television in the true sense of "wonder". Fool Us! makes for a refreshing change from the usual homogenised mass of formula drama & reality shows. There really is nothing quite like it around.

With the best European illusionists & card masters it is full of interesting people who have incredible skills. There is nothing mean or nasty about this show. Penn doesn't even swear so it is a perfect show for bright kids as well as adults (grown-ups?)

Jonathon Ross (Jonafon Woss??) does a pretty good job as compere. If you haven't seen Fool Us! yet, I recommend you go find it! And that's no BS!

Great to see Penn and Teller still in action after 30 plus years in magic. Hosted by Jonathan Ross i thoroughly enjoyed this 1 hour special, after all who doesn't like a bit of magic? To get that universal feeling of "hey, how did you do that?" brings back a lot of good memories. Also the duo performed 2 tricks of their own on the TV special which was definitely too good to be true, got my money's worth. I think its great that ITV got the chance to broadcast this because here in London at least, you don't get to see much magic acts aired on television.

My only regret is that the show wasn't longer, that's just how glued I was. Misdirection is an amazing talent that most of us will never master but man it's amazing to see it in action with those magicians.

I generally quite like this show as it's just fun to watch. But there are a few things that are starting to really bother me. Yes, it's reality TV and so there is going to be some things left out, but at some point if you know it's all fake it isn't as much fun.

Specifically: they are editing some performances to make them seem impossible; performances that SURELY did not fool them get some made up story about how it really DID fool them so they can get the performer in their Vegas act; they are re-using audience reactions to tricks for multiple episodes/performances; Penn & Teller are hamming up their fake reactions to tricks that don't deserve such a reaction.

Vegas and Hollywood together...I shouldn't be surprised?

I don't do reality TV. I don't do all these so called talent shows. Nor do I watch celebrity this, Z factor that, nobody's got talent, or celebrity get me out of here dancing with has-beens on ice Big Brother. I'll stop myself there before I write paragraphs of rant about the turgid state of current prime time television - because I could quite easily. This, however, is *exactly* what *should* be on prime time TV. Family friendly. Amusing and entertaining. Two unquestionably talented guys at the peak of their profession, watching along with the audience and us at home, fellow practitioners of their art trying to "fool" them. There are no *freaks* put in front of us for us to laugh at (unless you count Jonathan Ross), nor are there any talentless buffoons for us to pity. This is a proper talent show. People at the top of their game - Penn & Teller - giving fellow (talented) magicians and illusionists a platform to showcase their skills. It's not judgmental. It's not confrontational. And some of the highest praise from P&T is reserved for acts that haven't fooled them, but who have such great technique and execution it seems to have genuinely moved them.

I saw this show for the first time a few nights ago, and was highly entertained in seeing the experts dissect various magic tricks by performers on stage, and then admitting when they had been fooled.

The format is simple; Penn and Teller sit at the front of a stage and watch various prestidigitators perform their tricks on stage to see if the legendary duo of Penn and Teller can reverse engineer or deduce how they did their trick.

The only down-shot is that they will, for the sake of keeping the essence of the trick, a secret, sometimes use magicians jargon or stage lingo to get their point across to the performer on stage, and in this way communicate to both us and the audience that they either know how the trick was done, or are sufficiently impressed that they have been fooled.

But even then, they do reveal and otherwise convey to us the basics of some of the tools the performers use to create their illusions.

I had fun watching this show as I watched and tried to figure out how each trick might have been done. And I found myself being right a significant part of the time. It was very interesting and entertaining.

For anyone who's been to a magic show, wants to see magic, but is curious how any of the tricks were done, then you must see this very basic yet very remarkable show.

Enjoy!