Prisoner Remake - AMC - New ComicCon Footage...

Yeah, that looks outstanding. I wish it was airing during these empty-airwaves summer months instead of the fall.

Oooh...mama like. Why is it that I'm rarely getting upset at remakes of television series?

Looks shit.

Because by most criteria serialized fictional television has gotten much better, while with film that isn't the case at all.

Holy crap. I was really dubious...but that actually looks promising, and different enough from the original that I'll be able to separate it mentally. Of course, I stopped watching halfway through, but they do seem to be going in an interesting new direction in some ways.

What's kind of creepy is that this looks almost exactly like what I said the modern-day equivalent of the original's production design would be like. The original show looks weird to modern American eyes, but at the time the weirdness was more subtle--a combination of extreme but trendy "mod" designs and the atmosphere of an old-fashioned British resort town. I argued that the modern, American equivalent would be an overly-groomed, Disneyish suburban center with an old-fashioned feel to parts of it. And voila. Putting it in the middle of the desert is a pretty neat idea too.

My main concern is that this is just building up to the same twist as the original series, which would make the whole thing pretty pointless.

Wow...

Jesus versus Gandalf...

Wow this looks great. AMC have Breaking Bad and Mad Men under their belt so they have earned my interest. Can't wait for this. I never saw the final episode of the original show so I have no idea what the point of the whole thing was.

I saw it twice. I still don't know the point.

Big fan of the show though. Really looking forward to this new one.

Carveziel is no McGoohan, but McKellan more than makes up for it. Really looking forward to this.

Netflix that shit immediately! The final episode is one of most bizarre hours of television ever aired.

I tried watching the series off of Netflix, and it honestly felt like the episodes were in random order. The second or third episode felt like there were ten episodes in between it, and I found conflicting information about the intended sequential order of the episodes.

Then I gave up and went back to the other thousands of shows I'm watching simultaneously.

Well, they were... there’re varying orders to view ’em, and episodes you can skip altogether, it’s actually quite maddening.

I even made a thread about this once. I think in the end I watched it in the order outlined on this site. But like everyone says, there's no order really, the whole fucking show's random as hell.

I don't know. The original fun was the trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Asides from the fact we already know this, fiction has become so twist oriented, that the central mystery will have been figured out by most viewers with a brain. And if they are going in another direction, well it's not really the Prisoner is it?

This remake is so uninspired. It's just using the Lost template (big budget serialised mystery) to hook viewers, as opposed to tackling the original show in any meaningful manner. The footage was entirely predictable and boring, even McKellen couldnt save it with his tired "I know everything" shtick. The only thing that stood out and looked promising was that one second shot of people wearing pig masks, alas if only the entire show was filmed like that. A cast wearing pig masks all throughout, now that would have captured the spirit of the original Prisoner.

Have you ever read the background stuff about The Prisoner and McGoohan in particular? He was fiercely independent and that last episode was just him flying the bird at all of the different groups pressuring him about the show. If I remember correctly he didn't even pass out scripts until the last moment and did his best to keep as many people as possible off the set so that nobody would see it coming. The gnashing and grinding of teeth involved with the Sopranos finale and people not knowing how to take it must have been nothing compared to when this thing aired.

What's unique about the original Prisoner is that it's an allegorical drama (and often melodrama) first and foremost, with science fiction trappings. Not the serial action-adventure sci-fi mystery that it usually gets described as (though it made use of those elements). For McGoohan, solving the central mysteries were less important than exploring the themes he conceived the show around. Hence the finale was almost all allegory and little plot, which he knew he'd have to be protective of to get produced.

I'll keep my hopes up that this new version gets it, and give 'er a fair go, but will expect something along the lines of a serial action-adventure sci-fi msytery with a vague ending that purports deep thought by virtue of simply leaving the big things unanswered, as opposed to being open to interpretation, which is different. Or, worse, answers all of its mysteries for a tidy wrap-up (ETA: tidy wrap-up with a message!). I'll hope, though; it's AMC, which has a pretty good early batting average, not SyFy.

I would have hated to have been a BBC phone operator the night the finale aired.

I remember hearing how that was never intended to be the finale of the series, and the episode previous was supposed to be a season finale. McGoohan got the news that this would be the end of the show, locked himself in his trailer for days, and emerged with the finale's script.

A friend of mine was watching it ahead of me, and casually spoiled the ending.
I wasn't angry because I simply didn't believe him. It's that kind of thing.

IFC is airing the first three episodes of the original tonight.

Bump. A reminder that this starts this coming Sunday.

Has anyone seen any reviews or comments for it yet?

Alan Sepinwall didn't seem to like it, but he freely concedes that it's not his thing.

Thanks for the link, Mangy. I hope that he's wrong about Jim simply running around, shouting for answers for 6 hours. This should be meatier than that.

I'm in this for McKellen only. Caveziel is a poor, poor substitute for Patrick McGoohan, so I have no illusions of this being in the same league as the original.

I still wish that they had gotten Clive Owen to do this. He's the only actor that I can think of that can pull off that simmering-rage demeanor of McGoohan's that is so essential for the role. I could see Clive selling the whole 'I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or NUMBERED' speech; I can't see Jim doing it.

You can find lots doing a Google news search. Be prepared for many variations of "Watching The Prisoner made me feel like one!"

So I assume some people around here gave this a look??

Its certainly shot well and takes the aesthetic of the original and use it wisely save for the blob which somehow looks less real and menacing then before. Save for that the rest of the production design choices are brilliant and quite lavish.

McKellan of course owns every scene he is in, but everyone else seems (and most obviously Cazavel) not to be fully committed or something else that is intangible at present.

I am really sure the BBC, with a decent budget, and especially considering the state of England regarding CCTV and personal liberties, could of made a really brilliant and killer update of this without being quite so on the nose.

It apparently get much better in the next 2 episodes, but also why only 6??

I'm DVRing the whole thing, but I was able to watch bits and pieces of this last night while I was working on something else. I love the look and feel of it, but I don't think that I like the new take on Number 6 himself. I don't fault Jim Caviezel, as it looks like he's playing the character, AS WRITTEN, correctly.

I definitely enjoyed it enough to watch 'til completion. I do miss the reserved 6 of the original to the always frantic all the time 6 of this series.

I have a very bad feeling that we're going to learn why he resigned. They already tottered up to the edge of spilling everything in the flashbacks. Why he resigned was the MacGuffin of the original series, not its allegorical point. Except in that the audience didn't have a right to know anymore than No. 2 did. Here, it's probably going to be a key to the whole message.

ETA: Poor Caviezel (and everyone else) is so outmatched by McKellen it's like they're in different productions mashed up in the editing suite.

From what I watched, it appeared that Ian was doing a great job of tearing it up with a wink and a smile.

It didn't look like the acting was BAD, though. As I mentioned above, it looked to me like Jim was doing a very good job with this particular vision of Number 6.

Yeah, not knocking Caviezel, he's doing what he can. But he's also saddled with a very indistinct role; he's doing well enough with what he has, but I'm not entirely sure just what their vision of this No. 6 is.

In the original, no matter what mental/physical tortures he was put through McGoohan had a definable tough inner core of outrage that sustained him, and centered the show on a higher morality than just cold war paranoia thriller. This Six is reacting to some horrible and unimaginable treatment -- in the last one up to the verge of breaking, in good Prisoner tradition -- but we don't know who he is (and I don't mean his job or why he resigned) or what he's holding onto. He's more baffled than pissed off. Which makes him an Everyman and a cipher almost as much as No. 2. But, this was just the first two hours, so I'm hoping there's more meat to 6 in the shows to come.

Also, it's curious that it seems the entire run is going to maintain the brainwashing/mind game that No. 2's been preaching ("You're insane, the Village has always been here and there's never been anywhere else") as the means to crack No. 6. Which makes sense if it's just to be 6-hour run and not a long-running series. But that's going to make it practically impossible for No. 2 to ever ask, "Why did you resign?" As soon as he does, the gambit is forfeited. Very curious to see how they play this out.

That's IT right there. McGoohan's Number 6 understood right away that they were wanting information. I don't see that Caviezel's Number 6 has even really been briefed as to why he's even there.

Is this a joint production with the BBC? It only having 6 episodes makes me think it is a British thing, I do hope it gets aired on BBC 1 over here.

Full disclosure: I never watched the original series, outside of an episode or two, and then not even completely. I suck.

I thought the first two hours were ok, not great, and for many of the reasons you all state. McKellen is a god. Caviezel's performance didn't bother me. Must be tough to have read the entire script and know the eventual outcome and still act as if you know nothing of what's going on but still have flashes to life in another world and mysterious feelings regarding the people/places in the Village; very complex character work that he may or may not be pulling off well. I don't mind his baffled Number 6, I find it to be an appropriate response given the current situation. I think playing it cool/intense would give the entire show a different feel that wouldn't necessarily jive with a 6 episode miniseries structure.

Episode 3. WTF? Gotta watch that again. Like 4-5 times.

Hmm..... well they are certainly telling us more than in the original but in more and rather interesting ways although not quite as deftly, of course he works for a company and not the government as in the first so the edge is slightly dulled.

Ruth Wilson was match for McKellan and it looks like she is set to deliver more goods. I was not sure where they where going with Jamie Campbell but did not expect that, or how grimly they went with it.

Its a co-production with ITV not the BBC.

I don't want to say it out loud, but I have a very, very bad feeling that we're going to get Matrixed.

wow 3 and 4 were awful, i guess its worth finishing (especially as the reviews say there are real answers in episode 6, something the original series never got) ... but wow it is just incoherent, boring and stupid... I cant imagine how you screw the prisoner up so royally, and with mckellan no less.... shameful.

and i always thought caviezel had no life so Im unphazed but yeah he sucks too.

Yep, that just happened.

I watched all 6 episodes in one sitting yesterday and it's frustrating that the way they set it up gave them an excuse to just randomly forget or drop various things at various points. I didn't feel like there was ever really any chance to figure out the rules of the world. It just wasn't consistent at all. And while the ending explains why it doesn't make it any better. I'm still frustrated that as a viewer that I found out at the ending that 75% of what was going on was useless.

I would call it an interesting mess, I put the most of the blame on the 6 episode limit, and then the new concepts, everything was condensed and there was not enough time for breathing room like in the original. With the money put into the building the whole thing in the middle of Africa and giving it more than just a cheap pass, why you would not give yourself more room to express is beyond me. I think Wilson is the only one who came out ahead.

I didn't hate it, which I expected to. Then again it really had nothing at all to do with the original Prisoner other than the name, the Village concept and the numbering system. It's almost like somebody got a 5 minute briefing on what the original Prisoner was like, and then tried to remake it from that rather than the actual original show.

I watched it the first time it aired. The apathy and resignation of the finale drove me into a funk for a couple of days. The remake seems to draw more inspiration from Camus' The Myth Of Sisyphus than it took from the original series. The revelation in the last episode that the New York vignettes aren't flashbacks, but happen concurrently with the scenes in the village came as a refreshing surprise. I'm reluctant to say more, since AMC is re-airing it ofr those who missed it, but I recommend it.

Caviezel's never really won me over as an actor, but I recorded the new miniseries. I watched the first 2 hours, but struggled to get through them, as I found the story boring (I only made it through one episode of the original series). This morning, after not watching the remainder of the miniseries in over a week, I decided to delete it to make room for something else on my DVR. I think I may have been more interested if they hadn't jammed it into 6 episodes and 3 nights.