Wednesday, November 18, 2009

'The Prisoner' review - andreikirilenkotattoo on TV

In today's column, I review "The Prisoner" remake on AMC:
I thought the fact that I had never seen the original version of "The Prisoner" would make me an ideal viewer for AMC's 21st-century remake. Because I had violated TV critic code and never saw more than a few minutes of the trippy '60s series about an ex-spy trapped in a bizarre, isolated community called The Village, I would have nothing to compare the new version to, and no outraged reactions of "That's not how Patrick McGoohan did it!"

And watching the original is far from a prerequisite for the new one. There are nods to the old show (most of which I recognized from having seen a "Simpsons" episode that sent Homer to The Village), but the miniseries stands on its own, and whatever sense it makes � which, at times, isn't much � in no way depends on knowing what McGoohan was up to.

But at the end of the miniseries' six hours, I realized that the reason I had never watched the original "Prisoner" made me anything but an ideal audience for the remake.

Simply put, it's incredibly weird, and I don't do weird if I can help it.
You can read the full review here.

I don't think I'll be doing episode or night-specific blog reviews. As you can see, it's not really my thing.

UPDATE: Bumping this up in case you want to discuss the premiere, at least.

UPDATE #2: Bumping this up one last time in case anyone wants to now discuss the thing as a whole entity, including whether the ending satisfactorily answered the questions. (It explained the wraps, at least.)

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