Television Review: The Prisoner (2009)
November 19th, 2009Categories: John J. Joex, Reviews, Television Reviews
AMC’s remake of The Prisoner provides and interesting premise, but ultimately delivers a snooze-fest.
By John J. Joex
AMC, 6 Hour Mini-Series
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
The Prisoner from the 1960’s was an iconic series about a secret agent trapped in a “Village” where people who “know too much” are kept (for more information, see my retrospective on that series), and the possibility of a remake of the original has floated about for a decade or more. After several false starts on other fronts, the cable channel AMC finally took the ball and ran with it bringing us a six hour mini-series reimagining of the concept. After having sat through the entire six hours and now taking the time to scribble out the review, there is of course a temptation to compare the remake to the original. I will resist that for this review as much as possible, and instead try to judge the mini-series on its own merits. That said, though, I will still hold this version to the standards of the original, but more on that below.
As far as the premise, the new version takes a very different road from the original, while also hearkening back to its source at times. The character we will come to know as Number 6 is not an international spy, but a person working for a company known as Summakor and his job is to collect information on people. He decides that he has moral issues with the surveillance he does and resigns. Then after a meeting with a mysterious woman whom he invites to his apartment, he wakes up to find himself, inexplicably, in the desert. He sees an old man being chased, then shot, and he goes to the man’s aide. This eventually leads him to the Village, which is nearby, and he discovers that they have been waiting for him.
The Village in this incarnation of the series serves a very different purpose than its counterpart from the original. In that version, the Village acted as a prison of sorts for former agents and government operatives who “knew too much”. And the leaders of that Village made it their task to pry as much information from its prisoners as possible while trying to destroy their sense of individuality in the process. In the AMC remake, the Village has almost the look of a 50’s suburban town and the people that live there, who all go by numbers instead of names, act like there is nothing more beyond its borders. The Village is the whole world and there is no New York City, London, Paris, etc., nor has there ever been. The reason for the people being in the Village is very different as well, though I won’t go into that too much because “that would be telling”. Still the information divulged on the Village and its purpose, and Number 6’s connection to it all, is really quite interesting and lays the groundwork for a potentially fascinating reworking of an old concept.
Unfortunately, the writers fail to do much with the promising concept supplied to them. This new version of The Prisoner had the potential to present us with some engaging, challenging viewing. Instead, we see murky, under-developed stories that seem to raise a lot of questions, but never seem too interested in providing answers. Ambiguity rules across The Prisoner’s six hours, which you might expect from the show, but you also expect some form of resolution as well. You also expect to care about finding the answers, and viewers may quickly find they are just not too interested in unlocking the mysteries of this snooze-fest.
Even worse, the writers fail to take advantage of the exceptional actors they have at their disposal. James Caviezel (The Passion of Christ) seems to be sleepwalking through his portrayal of Number 6 at times with a perennial WTF look on his face. Far from McGoohan’s defiant and indignant Number 6, this character just seems to go with the flow and demonstrates his resistance to his imprisonment through his brooding antipathy. And while Ian McKellan (The X-Men, The Lord of the Rings) gives us a delightfully impish performance as Number 2 and easily dominates every scene he is in, he seems more like a kid playing at times than an actor truly engaged in his role. They even fail to do much with Lennie James (Jericho) who spends most of his time onscreen sulking. And Ruth Wilson (Jane Eyre) could have provided a strong female presence for the series if they had brought her into the main action more often and actually done something with her character.
I don’t blame the actors, though. I place the responsibility on the behind the scenes creative team which fails to advance their intriguing premise while also failing to utilize the actors to their potential. The episodes just seem to meander and often fall short of presenting any clear purpose. And this is where I hold the remake to the standards of the original. If you are going to put the title of The Prisoner on this mini-series, expectations will follow it. Just like fans would expect from a series with the Star Trek title, or Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits or any well-respected franchise. Say what you want about the original version of The Prisoner, love it or hate it, but it never delivered boring episodes and each episode had a point. Sure, that series could be confusing or hard to follow or just downright obtuse, but it still managed to engage the viewer. The Prisoner from the 60’s blazed new trails and really challenged the medium of television. The current version does none of that. In fact, a few changes here and there along with a different title and it could almost pass as a completely different series.
Now I will allow that the mini-series may redeem itself through multiple viewings. The original series definitely required several times around to pick up on the symbolism and veiled messages (and many of us are still trying to decipher “Fall Out”), so maybe the remake would fair better a second time around. However, I watched the original series multiple times because it engaged and challenged me and made me want to unlock its mysteries. I just can’t say that about AMC’s rather plodding take on the series. Still, I will put it on my “To Do” to give this one another look-see at some point. Maybe just prior to the DVD release which is scheduled for March 2010.
Ratings-wise, the mini-series did quite well with its Sunday night premiere which just about equaled the numbers of AMC’s Mad Men finale the week prior. I have not seen the results on the Monday and Tuesday airings yet, though I’m betting each night slacked off some from the previous night [update: the ratings did drop for the second night and pretty significantly]. Still, these numbers could convince the cable channel to commission further episodes as they left it somewhat open-ended. If they do that, I can only hope that the writers manage to come up with some less sleep-inducing stories.
Buy the original series on DVD from Amazon.com:
