Petting Party

In a week that seems too full of people Fucking With Shit That Shouldn’t Be Fucked With (Miles Fisher, I’m looking at YOU!), a steaming pile of shit lands in my Facebook inbox. The Prisoner is one of the best TV shows there ever was, and now some cunt’s gone and remade it into a shit TV mini-series.

For those who’s never heard of it, The Prisoner starred ’60s spy heart-throb Patrick McGoohan (who sadly passed away earlier this year) and was one of the most influential and subversive shows ever to be on ITV. Yes, ITV did something good a very long time ago. Every sci-fi show you’ve ever watched and nerded to death has a Prisoner fan lurking behind it somewhere, that’s for sure! Buy the box-set and watch it to understand exactly how amazing it is because any tripe I write just isn’t going to do it justice.

Basically, it’s a very English, very ’60s-spy, of it’s time sort of show that actually stands the test of time. The remake won’t. It stars Ian McKellan as the mysterious Number Two and Jim Caviezel (Mel Gibson’s idea of Jesus Christ) as Number Six.

Here’s why I think this remake will SUCK:

• It’s set in America. Honestly, does every remake have to be set in America just to make it appeal to dumb [read: lowest-commen-denominator] Americans? The Prisoner was on ITV for fucks sake and they managed to get away with having the location a bit mysterious*.
• The trailer shows no evidence of the spy-element. What the fuck is it actually about then?
• It doesn’t appear to have any of the quirkiness that made the original so good.
• It looks like a bog-standard glossy American fantasy-drama of the likes of Jericho, Fringe, any of those other shows which promised so much, and delivered so little.
• Can they manage to make Rover simultaneously scary and ridiculous? (Sorry if you have no idea what I mean, I don’t like spoiling things too much)
• What’s with the love story? Number Six was a proper spy, not some James Bond slut-spy. He tried his damnedest to find out what the fuck was going on and didn’t have time for those sort of frivolities. I guess they’re trying to ‘modernise’ it and make it less ’60s-stiff-upper-lip and more I’m-a-brooding-yet-attractive-central-character-who-has-a-heart.

Ugh, I’m sure there’s more reasons why this should suck but I’m too pissed to express myself more eloquently. Just watch this pile of crap if you want. I wanted so badly to switch it off by 3 minutes in but I held out through the whole sodding 9 minutes for you dear readers…

*The original Prisoner was actually filmed in Wales at Portmeirion. You can get married there- geek wedding or what?! I told my family that once, pissed at a family occasion thinking they’d all be like “Oh Portmeirion so pretty!”, instead they all went “What? Like where The Prisoner was filmed!!”

Filed under: TV