Review of AMC miniseries: As compelling as it is confusing

By Jeffrey Jolson

Sir Ian in a bright moment for Number Two

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 11/17/09 – “The Prisoner” is set in an idyllic village that belies the fact that it is a prison where mind control and rats are the soup du jour at the corner café. Such is it with the AMC six-episode remake with Sir Ian McKellan and James Caviezal.  It’s just weird enough to get you hooked, and just weird enough to keep the remote nearby for a quick escape.

There is no easy escape for Number Six (Caviezel), originally played by Patrick McGoohan who co-created the British TV show in 1967. Back then, Six was the “Secret Agent Man” from the song, whose verse was “they gave him a number and took away his name.”

In 2009, Six is an exiled, brainwashed New York spy analyst.  As might be in the psychedelic 60s, we find the 2009 Six dealing with love potions, giant balls rolling through the desert, mysterious deep holes appearing in the ground, and other Kafka nightmares. And they add 2009 twists like a troubled gay son for Number Two.

Even the promotions are weird, and not just in content as expected in a tease campaign. AMC blanket-bombed every show on their line-up with “The Prisoner” commercials for more than a month, and used those damnable little bottom screen pop-ups to promote from below until you were as crazy-mad as Six.

But they didn’t stop once the miniseries began Sunday night or continued into Monday and Tuesday. On “The Prisoner” itself they continued to advertise the show, and not just the upcoming episodes, but the next 15-20 minutes of it. No self-confidence I say, when the ad masters don’t believe the programming alone won’t keep you from watching past the commercials.

It was like one of those local news shows that keep taunting you with promos for upcoming segments like “Are your children in danger?” and for 15 seconds at the end of the newscast say you shouldn’t let your kids get into windowless vans with masked strangers.

Here it was a little different. AMC would run a brief teaser commercial about what was coming up on this episode, and added injury to insult with what I’m sure they thought was a clever tool for advertisers and self-promotion.

AMC had advertisers like Subaru and Palm Pre sponsor a little thing before their commercials about the next 20 minutes of the show that said things like “What do you think the little pills were for? Stay tuned for 30 seconds and see!” Then after their regular ad, the answer would be “They are important to Six finding out why he is there.”

Excuse me, isn’t it the writers’ and director’s job to tell us the pills are a plot point, maybe with the actor’s deference to them, repeated imagery or spooky back-lighting and close-ups?  Well the story-makers did their job on “The Prisoner,” but the sponsors stated the obvious at times, and blew a good story build-up occasionally.

Still I couldn’t really stop viewing the show; just like episode two was about who is spying on whom and who was watching the watchers. It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you everyone in The Village is spying on everyone, yet some of the other sub-plots like those of hallucinations, flashbacks and surreal mysteries are just too unfathomable.

The old TV series was taken off the air for the same reason as the show went from a one-trick pony about Six trying to escape The Village to adding in enough spacey subplots to create a cult 60s hit, depending on what sort of bud you were smoking.

I got into it during later re-runs and the hit song from the show. I thought the show  sucked most of the time but I wasn’t old enough to blaze and the bongs were taller than me. Guess that wasn’t true in the U.K., from where Stuart Berwick writes the following on the short-lived TV series.

“The Prisoner” is a unique piece of television. It addresses issues such as personal identity and freedom, democracy, education, scientific progress, art and technology, while still remaining an entertaining drama series. Over seventeen episodes we witness a war of attrition between the faceless forces behind ‘The Village’ (a Kafkaesque community somewhere between Butlins and Alcatraz) and its most strong willed inmate, No. 6. who struggles ceaselessly to assert his individuality while plotting to escape from his captors.”

Ok, we get it. In The Village, life is existential. Yet we expect something more than giant rubber balls running you down in the desert these days to explain we are not in control of our destinies. But in the absence of 60s blotter acid, we also need plot continuity and occasional resolution.  I see relatively few instances of any of those three.

In the 1967-68 run of the TV series there was never much resolution and discussion groups never got much further than “Cool, man,” or “Did you ever look at a leaf real closely? It’s like this show.”

Sir Ian is of course perfect as Number Two, head of the desert oasis, the sleepy little town of pink houses and the 50s-stryle Main Street. There are cabs, jobs and the illusion of freedom, mostly through brain-washing and fear.

McKellen will get plaudits come award-time and also blogs on the AMC site on the show and its locations, etc. Caviezel should get kudos as well, he does from me.

Ultimately, the 2009 version is starting to get swallowed by it excesses, as did it predecessor.  I just hope it all ends soon because I cannot stop watching it, and want to back to American surreal nightmares like the nightly news.

THE PRISONER

AMC cable station. Six Episodes, No. 3 tonight, re-runs all year, no doubt.