The Prisoner remake starts this Sunday

The Prisoner Set for Sunday Release

Quote :

The remake of classic 1960s Brit TV series The Prisoner will hit US screens on Sunday, when viewers of AMC will be able to enjoy writer Bill Gallagher's six-part "reimagining of themes and characters", as the New York Times ominously puts it.

Jim Caviezel has the task of interpreting Number Six, with veteran Brit thesp Ian McKellen tackling the role of Number Two.

Fans of The Prisoner will doubtless wonder just how much of a "reimagining" Gallagher's effort is. He said: "The challenge of doing this show was to pay homage and yet be different."

In order to "tease the audience with the relationship between the two pieces and keep anchoring back into the original", Gallagher has retained some of the show's famous phrases - "Be seeing you" and "Local destinations only" - although whether Caviezel will bellow “I am not a number, I am a free man!” remains to be seen.

Caviezel will also meet the Rovers - the rather silly overinflated white balloons which proved so bothersome for Patrick McGoohan - but apart from that it's apparently all change.

For starters, the village has been relocated to Swakopmund, "a Bavarian-style resort in Namibia that is surrounded by desert and has an eerily striking collection of pastel A-frame cottages".

Number Six now works for "giant data-gathering corporation" Summakor* and, since he's an American and therefore a little less "straight-laced" than McGoohan, manages to become the "fulcrum of a love triangle" involving Number 313, a doctor played by Ruth Wilson.

McKellen's Number Two, meanwhile, is a single, fully-developed character throughout the series, rather than the original's various interpretations by different actors which represented the "embodiment of nameless bureaucratic evil".

That actor noted he “wouldn’t have wanted to play the original, because it would just be playing a caricature, an idea, a symbol", but that "here I felt I was playing a real person who had just as many personal problems as Number Six".

As for the ending of the reimagining, it won't leave viewers dangling or perplexed as The Prisoner did in 1968, because Gallagher "not only ties things up in the final hour of the new version, but also does it in a way that appears to reaffirm the importance of community".

Those of you who are getting that sinking feeling should look to Caviezel for assurance. He insisted: “I feel this project stands on its own. There’s a huge allegorical piece in the background, but there’s a lot of eye candy as well. It’s definitely a commentary on right here and right now.”

I'm pretty terrified of this. I'm trying desperately to keep an open mind, but I despise the idea of remaking good TV shows and movies to begin with and The Prisoner is one of the best. I can just imagine all these awful allusions that are "relevant to today's world" and... ugh. What do you guys think?

You mean it wasn't filmed in Portmeirion? In that case, it sucks.

I'm not going to be watching it. The original was a product of its time; that's what made it so good. Remove it from it's time and place, and it can't be the same. And it certainly can't be better.

I've never seen the show, but I wanted to know if you're opposed to the TOS-R?

unskilled78 wrote:

I've never seen the show, but I wanted to know if you're opposed to the TOS-R?

Depends? What's the TOS-R? And I'm not opposed to it, I'm just not going to watch it because I doubt it could will be as good as the original. If I were opposed to it, I would've declared that no one could watch it, and possibly set the studio on fire.

Rabid Badger wrote:

And I'm not opposed to it, I'm just not going to watch it because I doubt it could will be as good as the original. If I were opposed to it, I would've declared that no one could watch it, and possibly set the studio on fire.

Call yourself a wugwaher, Rabid Badger? As you don't intend on watching it, that's criteria for burning down a studio!

Rabid Badger wrote:

I'm not going to be watching it. The original was a product of its time; that's what made it so good. Remove it from it's time and place, and it can't be the same. And it certainly can't be better.

Bolding mine. Plus, it was a mindfuck almost from the word go. I definitely agree with this statement... but I don't have the channel it's going to be on right now, so even if I wanted to, I couldn't watch it.

Rabid Badger wrote:

I'm not going to be watching it. The original was a product of its time; that's what made it so good. Remove it from it's time and place, and it can't be the same. And it certainly can't be better.

I'm not sure how much I agree with that. Yes, a lot of the tension of the atmosphere is the result of the Cold War, but at the same time I can see the same themes being explored during different eras. That's not to say that it should be remade - after all, what's the point in remaking something that's already extremely well made? What is there to explore that hasn't been explored? How can you remake a show that was pretty much entirely run by one person when that one person is dead? And... uh... I've gone on a tangent and am not really sure where I was going with that sentence I cut off. It had an ultimate point, but it's vanished into the aether by now.

Rabid Badger wrote:

unskilled78 wrote:

I've never seen the show, but I wanted to know if you're opposed to the TOS-R?

Depends? What's the TOS-R?

TOS-R is the digitally remastered version of the original Star Trek.

The difference, I think, is that in the case of TOS-R all that was changed were special effects and some sound effects (including adding sounds that had been omitted originally in error). The actual story itself was left untouched because the people who were making it knew what kind of backlash they would it get.

In this case, a full-blown remake, I would tend to err on the side of caution because for every success (Battlestar Galactica) there are at least two failures (The Fugitive, Knight Rider)

Spotts1701 wrote:

TOS-R is the digitally remastered version of the original Star Trek.

The difference, I think, is that in the case of TOS-R all that was changed were special effects and some sound effects (including adding sounds that had been omitted originally in error). The actual story itself was left untouched because the people who were making it knew what kind of backlash they would it get.

In this case, a full-blown remake, I would tend to err on the side of caution because for every success (Battlestar Galactica) there are at least two failures (The Fugitive, Knight Rider)

Ah, I never knew that. Thanks for explaining it.

And yeah, while the remake of Battlestar Galatica was light-years better than the original, I've lived long enough to see them try to remake Mission:Impossible, Knight Ride, the Twilight Zone and The Avengers. Remakes are always dicey, remakes of classic 'cult' shows doubly so.

Rabid Badger wrote:

And yeah, while the remake of Battlestar Galatica was light-years better than the original

One reason for that may have been that the original was only alright. It wasn't great. It was a pretty good series, but I don't think it ranks way up there like a lot of the other things people choose to remake. If people went around remaking series with great concepts but mediocre or bad execution, this whole remaking business may not have been all that bad of an idea. The problem is that people usually pick things they think will be financially successful - AKA extremely good movies and TV shows - and then they try to popularize them, which tends to drain the original piece of media of anything that made it good in the first place (The Day The Earth Stood Still, anyone?).

unskilled78 wrote:

I've never seen the show, but I wanted to know if you're opposed to the TOS-R?

Have'nt seen it yet, but CBS Action (the re-named Zone Thriller) is set to transmit it in the U.K/Europe starting this Monday....