The Illusionists

[AJM]

The Illusionists will feature in a 1 hour special on ITV here in the UK this evening - I believe recorded in front of a celebrity audience at London's Hammersmith Apollo during their tour earlier in the year.

Andrew

[mrgoat]

Cool, I find TV the best seat in the house for those large venues.

Have to break my rule and watch ITV though. Meh.

[mrgoat]

Also, I might have to let mrsgoat watch some of x factor or the dancing one or whatever the [censored] to get my way...

[AJM]

The X Factor finished last week - it's the Strictly final tonight though, which will clash with the Illusionists.

You may struggle to wrestle the TV remote from Mrs Goat tonight.

[I.M. Magician]

Is that the same Apollo theater who's ceiling collapsed this week?

[AJM]

Steve

No, the ceiling collapsed in the Apollo theatre in London's West End - the Hammersmith Apollo, where the Illusionists performed, is a larger theatre outside the City Centre. It is used chiefly as a concert venue.

Penn and Teller played a week of dates at the Hammersmith Apollo a couple of years ago which I have a feeling sparked the 'Fool Us' series as the eventual series host, Jonathan Ross, was milling about at the performance I attended.

Cheers

Andrew

[Tom Moore]

There's actually 3 apollo theatre's in London / "The west end" various neighbourhoods
Apollo on Shaftsbury Avenue is a 750 seater where the plasterwork cealing just fell down
Apollo in Victoria is a 2200 seater where Wicked has been running forever
Apollo in Hammersmith (often sponsored so known as the "budwiser apollo" etc) is a 3500 seater generally used for touring international shows that need somewhere for a few days and as a Television Theatre for filming DVD's and TV specials of live theatre productions.

All three venues get several people per week turning up at the wrong venue for the show they want to see

[mrgoat]

I was allowed to watch it. And we both really enjoyed it. Sure, I'd seen most of it before, but it was great hour of telly. Apart from Dan Sperry. Never seen him before. More than happy to never see him again. Sure he is popular with da kidz, but it didn't work for me. Especially how he was so rough on those doves.

So thanks for the heads up!

[Tom Moore]

It did a great job of capturing the live show well (including its problems) and was overall a nice piece of TV. Hopefully the ability to plan and prepare for next years filming will mean it grows and expands into a proper TV special.

On a performance level i just don't like Dan Sperry's style but fully appreciate it's an aesthetic designed for a specific demographic that i'm just not a part of. In his writings (and DVD's) he always comes across as a very thoughtful performer who's also very keen on animal care but sadly whenever i've seen him work i've always found him to be sloppy and his animal husbandry (whilst not negligence or abusive) always looking to be below the high benchmark he sets. I feel like i need to see him doing more properly original and tailored material rather than his current repertoire that is essentially "the usual stuff" but done with weird make-up.

[Tom Moore]

disappointing ratings - it was shown on ITV the main commercial channel (equivalent of NBC) in a reasonably prime saturday night slot. 1.75m viewers (7.25% audience share) To put that in some context yet another repeat of Harry Potter on the same channel got more than double this figure, a repeat of 40yr old sitcom on a rival channel brought in the same number of viewers. Most other shows that sit in this timeslot on this channel would expect to be bringing in at least 3m viewers. It picked up 1/2 to 1/3rd the viewers that Penn & Teller managed on the same network/slot and Derren Brown (who's on a much smaller channel) picks up these sorts of viewing figures for his worst rated episodes.

Fortunately because it's such a cheap special to actually make i think it's a safe bet they will pick it up again next year but i can see it being relegated to a much less prime-time viewing slot.

[user_241]

It's too bad about the ratings. I really enjoyed watching the TV show. I really enjoyed the variety and the personality that each performer brought.


I have to agree, I wasn't a huge fan of Dan Sperry's dove act either. I think his character is missing a sense of humour. That being said, I've seen him in a teaching video, and he's pretty good.

[Richard Kaufman]

Dan Sperry is a pioneer in adopting his look and demeanor to that of a magician. He adopted this persona many years ago and deserves recognition for that. I think he's pretty adament about treating his birds well.

[mrgoat]

Not sure what recognition one needs to give a performer for dressing up like an emo kid...

Sure, I'm not his demographic, but he looked too old to be playing dress up!