THEPRISONER

    The one thing about the 2009 series, is that it's understandable. No-one who watched it is left in any doubt of what THEPRISONER is all about. There is no Fall Out at the end, because Two maganaged to achieve that which he set out to do, and that is to pass on the village to another, that other being Six.
   We know who THEPRISONER is, why he resigned. we know what 'Rover' is, having been created in the mind of Six, and not simply the village guardian that we have known it to be. Yet having said that, 'Rover' is symbolic of one's fears in both series.
   The village is all in the mind, conjoured up in the subconscious mind of Two's wife M2. And when M2 is awake, holes begin to appear in the village, and if M2 were to stay awake long enogh, the village and it's inhabitants, would simply disappear into oblivion!
   This is not a remake. There would be no point in simply having made a direct remake, as there is already Patrick McGoohan's masterpiece. And even if a direct remake had been made, it would have lacked Patrick McGoohan as No.6.
    However, the 2009 series does contain many of the elements of the original series, only reinterpreted, reinvented. THEPRISONER is more subtle than the original series, as in the clothes it's citizens wear for example. Only 93 wears the old style of piped blazer. Oh there are those who still wear piped blazers, as 313, but it's subtle, and citizens wear modern day style of deck shoes.
   Both series have much in common, it just takes a keen observational eye to see it. I struggled with the series at first. Well there was so much going on, so much to take in, that it took me a second screening of each of the six episodes for me to get a handle on it. For example, in Arrival when I was watching the Prisoner, as Michael, in New York, I thought I was watching flashbacks of the Prisoner's previous life before his arrival in the village. But I was wrong, the Prisoner was living two existances at one and the same time. As Six in the village, and as Michael in New York!!
    I know that the majority of fans of the original series didn't "get it," that what they expected would be a remake. I on the other hand got exactly what I expected in THEPRISONER, I even enjoy listening to the soundtrack of the series, which I have on cd.
   When I think back to 1968 and the reaction to the Prisoner, the majority of the television watching public didn't like McGoohan's creation either. Oh yes, there were children like me who were hooked on the series, but sadly not any in my class at school. And it wasn't until alomst ten years later that appreciation for the Prisoner really took off. And so perhaps it will take ten years for appreciation for THEPRISONER to grow.
BCNU