What a terrible show. Ian and I suffered through the first hour, watched maybe 15 or 20 minutes of the second hour and gave up. Jim Caviezel is no Patrick McGoohan, and Ian McKellan just seems weird and crazy rather than crazy and sinister.
Visually the little desert town was far less interesting then Portmeirion. It looked tired and run down, and the old style cars made me think they were in Cuba. Which I suppose could have been a metaphor or something, but if they were trying to make a point I missed it.
I found the dialogue to be turgid and plodding. Maybe it’s just the veil and fog of years, but I remember the dialogue in the original Prisoner to be rapier-like.
In the old Prisoner you knew that Number Six had some information that they desperately wanted, and so there was tension. Would they fool him? Would they find a way to break him.
In this current incarnation I have no idea what Number Six did prior to ending up in the Village. He could have been a banker or an accountant for all the clues you’re given in that first hour plus. Since I don’t know he was a spy, and since I don’t know he has information they want, there is zero tension. And the scenes of him driving the tour bus were just moronic.
Mad Men is a fascinating series (even though I can’t watch it because it’s a flashback to my childhood, and being constantly told, “But girl’s can’t do that.” but I digress). Point is that AMC has had a big miss with this mini-series.
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written by Terry England, December 03, 2009
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The original series did have sharp dialogue and the setting was just the right combination of idyllic and Kafkaesque to keep everyone off-balance. As to what they wanted from Number Six, that may be why this one just doesn't work. Times have changed. I'm not sure the idea that a person has a natural right to keep his reasons to himself plays anymore in an age where people confess to the most intimate things at the press of a button and the posting of a Twitter meme.
The State claimed a right to know why Number Six resigned. Number Six disagreed. As long as that basic right was maintained, the State could never achieve the kind of absolute control it deemed necessary for its continuation. There does seem something perverse in people that when someone says "It's none of your business" many of us immediately start trying to pry it into the open, as if that claim is a challenge. I think the claim "It's none of your business" held more weight in the Sixties than it does now, where it seems perverse in itself. Just withholding your name and phone number from a store when you make a purchase strikes many people as atavistic and weird.
Given that, one of the lynchpin themes of the original just may not seem to play for a contemporary version, so something else needs to be put in its place. But what? Seems they were fumbling around for something and never quite got a handle on it.