Independent, The (London): Staying In: It's just a delusion

Magicians ain't want they used to be. Where once we had perma- tanned dinosaurs in velvet coats sawing their beautiful assistants in half, we now have an American with a God complex dangling beside the Thames in a glass box, and an Englishman threatening to blow his own brains out in front of the nation.

This Sunday sees the start of Channel 4's Magic Month season, which begins with Derren Brown playing Russian roulette. Brown is not a magician exactly, more a man who appears to control minds. Until now, his schtick has involved getting people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't, such as persuading bookies to pay out on losing tickets, and scaring the wits out of a fairground operator as he rides on his own ghost train.

On Sunday, he'll be performing his most dangerous feat to date: a member of the public will load a handgun with a single bullet and give it to Brown. Brown must decide which barrel is loaded by putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.

You can't help but wonder if Brown's ego has got the better of him. Like David Blaine, who has chosen to fast for 44 days (that's four more than Jesus) in his Plexiglas prison, this self-proclaimed master of psychology is dicing with death. In the same way that Blaine's decision to turn starvation into a public spectacle has been deemed tasteless, Brown risks being criticised for using a deadly weapon for the purposes of entertainment.

A considerably more interesting proposition are the two Scottish magicians, Barry Jones and Stuart Macleod (above), who take to the streets with their alternative brand of comedy magic. In Magick, their illusions are played out in surreal locations such as disused sewage works, abandoned asylums and public toilets. The programme sees them adopting a series of outlandish guises: there's Diego Martinez, a mustachioed Latin lover who transforms a woman's lit cigarette into a gold pendant; a despondent high-street fundraiser who seemingly conjures an African child out of the air; and a homeless man who disappears from under his plastic sheeting on a park bench.

Unlike Brown and Blaine, illusionists who simply perform their tricks on television, Jones and Macleod use television to create their illusions. One suspects that a lot of their stunts, performed to a soundtrack of electronic bleeps and squelches, are tricks of film, light and sound.

There's a dark undercurrent to their work, too. They deposit razor- blades into sealed ready-made meals in the supermarket and, dressed in black tie, play the violin on their bare arms with a butcher's knife. In this respect, Magick isn't so far removed from the old- fashioned magic of sawing off limbs. Only this time there's the chance of a lot more blood.

`Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live' is on tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4; `Magick' follows at 10pm.