Sensing Moider

Media7, the neat mediawatching TV show led by Kiwi blog legend Russell Brown, trained its eye on NZ’s crime-‘n-psychics hit, Sensing Murder.
Sensing Murder is one of the (relatively few) things that divides our happy household. The lovely stronger light is fond of the show, while I can’t stand it. I have been enthusiastic about other spooky psychic shows, such as Most Haunted. Heck, I even participated in table tipping with the Most Haunted crew on one occasion. The difference between Sensing Murder and Most Haunted, as Stronger has identified, is the element of exploitation. Sensing Murder revisits recent unsolved violent crimes, talks to all the friends and family of the victims, and films lurid re-enactments of the psychic’s visions of this final demise. It all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
And I don’t for a moment think the psychics are convincing. The basic method is that a psychic turns up and is followed around by a film crew as they “feel” their way through the case. The show proudly announces at the beginning, “Only true statements from the psychics are affirmed!”, oblivious to the fact that this process is a cold reader’s dream setup – they throw out guesses, get the right ones confirmed, and discard the wrong ones. (At least, I hope the show is oblivious to this, because otherwise they’re being outright deceptive, and that’s just not on.) I suspect that the psychics are all genuine people who believe in their abilities, and even if they engage in a bit of cheating they’d just rationalise this as “helping things along”.
Anyway, the episode features the show’s producer taking on NZ media satirist Jeremy Wells, who outright calls the psychics “charlatans” who are deluding people for cash. I was interested to hear that the format is an import, but this is the first country where the show became popular – in other markets it has vanished from the airwaves. It’s a good watch if you’re interested in this sort of thing, and can be found on TVNZ OnDemand and YouTube. See also the Media7 blog and Russell’s Hard News blog.
Further reading: Stephen Judd explains why he is offended by the show and the infamous “skeptic becomes believer” episode deconstructed.

5 thoughts on “Sensing Moider”

  2. There’s a great chapter on psychics in Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. It includes an anecdote about a TV psychic going to a pub and sensing all kinds of intimate details about the murder that happened there. According to the anecdote the production crew had arrived 2 days earlier and pumped the owner for info.
    The owner had happily supplied them with everything they wanted to know *except* the face that he’d made the story up several years earlier to give the pub more of a mysterious appeal 🙂
    Actually, I found most of Derren Brown’s book fascinating – not least the sarcasm.

  3. OMG – I can’t believe you outed me as a sensing murder watcher. That’s one of my deepest, darkest secrets!!!

  4. I have only seen one full episode of Sensing Murder, which I watched because it involved a real Hutt Valley murder that I remembered hearing about many years ago. I found it openly offensive, partly because it preyed on the gullible (the way some people talk about it makes me think “I hope you NEVER meet someone trying to sell a pyramid scheme”), but mostly yeah because of the exploitation of a real-life tragedy.
    I quite enjoy spooky psychic stuff, but like any good magic trick (and I’m sorry but that’s all this is) it needs showmanship to work for me. What I’ve seen of Sensing Murder was cheesy and phony and, ultimately, dull.
    It’s like how I used to quite enjoy David Copperfield doing magic tricks on stage, but when he pretended to float across the Grand Canyon or make the Statue of Liberty disappear, I just thought it was stupid.

  5. In New Zealand ‘Sensing Murder’ is a prime time show on a major network.
    Yet the various Derren Brown shows are buried at strange times on obscure or SkyTV only channels.
    This country is strange.

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