★★★★★ 0/5

ABC takes The Prisoner

The ABC has picked up the rights to the US cable remake of The Prisoner, starring Sir Ian McKellen.

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The ABC has picked up the rights to the  US cable remake of The Prisoner, a co-production between ITV and AMC.

The 6x1hour show is based on the 1960s UK series starring Patrick McGoohan as a former secret agent who is held prisoner in a mysterious seaside village.

It stars Sir Ian McKellen and James Caviezel.

The series has also been sold to Germany’s ZDF, HBO Poland, South Africa’s M-Net, AXN Mystery in Japan, TVNZ, Cyprus’ CYBC, Belgium’s VRT and Greece’s Universal.

Source: TBI Vision

11 Responses

  1. David S:

    Fine, you were entertained for 16 weeks instead of 17.

    But nobody died, right? Your comparison seems a bit OTT in that light.

    It’s just television! 🙂

  2. Fleetwood:

    It’s a bit dated now like any show from the 60s. It has some fine actors, direction, composers and designers. It’s got some interesting locations and it’s in colour. At its best, it’s far from dull. OTOH, see my earlier comment. This isn’t The Avengers, for instance. Expect idiosyncrasy rather than uniformity, a pop-cultural allegory with fist fights and mysteries that may not be resolved or in the way you expect or like. McGoohan got bored and quit Danger Man when he made The Prisoner, hence this is not more of the same!

    I retain some fondness for it, despite and because of its quirks and limitations. Any halfway decent library or video store should carry it. The running time of the 2009 remake should get you through all the original eps McGoohan considered canonical. If you find you enjoy it, there’s a Blu-Ray remastered set that looks lovely and has some excellent extras not available elsewhere. And don’t forget to check out McGoohan’s in-character appearance in The Simpsons ep The Computer Wore Menace Shoes: it showed the actor/writer/director/creator did have a sense of humor about his most famous work.

  3. Fleetwood, you have never seen the final episode of the original series. Poke your eyes out now, before it’s too late! You can never unwatch that piece of garbage, though if you ever watch it you’ll spend the rest of your life wishing you could.

    I saw the whole series as a child when it first ran here, I loved it like no other program at the time, right up until the final episode. I have never recovered from from that night of horror, anger and disappointment. It forever destroyed the magic of television for me. Today’s Prisoner “cult following” reminds me of cults like Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate. Only crazier.

  4. Secret Squirrel, Barrie:

    McGoohan’s desire for an allegorical serial on life and television collided badly with script editor Markstein’s inclination for a more pragmatic spy yarn and the network’s natural desire to turn a profit.

    The Prisoner of the 1960s was a commercial failure and yet it still has some ineffable quality that even now routinely prompts people to try to get up remakes or sequels.

    One might wonder that this unforced, accidental oil and water production mix is at the heart of what made The Prisoner interesting and irreproducible – it’s not universally accessible or self-consistent.

    The remake has no such qualities, sadly. Isaac Asimov humorously wrote of the democratization of failure being the original’s underlying theme, and in this respect alone the 2009 remake excels.

  5. What’s wrong with the 60’s original, although I haven’t seen it apparently it has a huge cult following and I was planning on seeing it on DVD. If it’s got that 60’s feel to it and if it’s from the Uk from that time period it must be good.

  7. Don’t hold back, Paul. Tell us what you really think 😉 Thanks for that well-written review. As soon as I saw “US” and “remake” together I had this sinking feeling despite Sir Ian being in it.

    Why is it that when someone remakes a good film or TV series, they fail to understand what it was that made the original good in the first place?

    There was a time when if Auntie picked something up, you could be guaranteed a certain level of quality. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

  8. At least we’ll be able to watch it and make our own conclusions about it, instead of it being on one of the commercial channels, and having it chopped and changed from time slot to time slot.

  9. I hope it was a cheap buy…

    Truly a terrible waste of good actors and some impressive location shooting.

    Sensational just because, no cohesion, central conceit that is dated and crummy, needlessly sloppy work. Any hints of possible interest are uniformly wasted. This show goes nowhere, challenges only one’s patience and is The Prisoner In Name Only.

    It’s not for the viewer to take a muddled, artless, derivative mess and unravel it, dignify it with synthesized intent and purpose. There’s no mystery here to reward the thoughtful audience.

    The show was a hack job by clueless twits hoping to trick self-deluded self-appointed cognoscenti into seeing depths and substance that are entirely absent. In this respect they failed utterly – as the fan and trade reviews agree.

    To think Mad Men is made by AMC as well! Perhaps a temp was in charge the week The Prisoner 2009 was greenlit…

  10. The US reviews of this I saw were pretty scathing. Ratings weren’t very good either I believe.

    So, if the Yanks don’t like it it’s probably pretty good.

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