THE PRISONER

At last we have the remake of The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan's classic 1960s tv series is given the make-over by ITV1 and America's AMC. And it's not half bad. Forget the original, and treat this on its own merit, and you have an intriguing, unsettling, disturbing, and rather good looking drama. National Treasure Sir Ian McKellen makes a creepy, slightly sadistic, yet utterly charming Number Two (the man who seemingly runs The Village), while Jim Caviezel (who played the title role in 'The Passion Of The Christ') steps into McGoohan's shoes as the rebellious Number Six. The plot is simple; an un-named man (Caviezel) wakes up to find he has been taken to a surreal place called The Village where everyone has a number, and the inhabitants are clearly there against their will. Rather like Jim Carrey's 'The Truman Show', this is the story of one man who decides there is much more to life than the surroundings in which he finds himself. It's a classic fable which asks the questions "Why are we here?" and "Who is in control?" In the original, McGoohan's character was a British intelligence agent who resigns his job (for reasons unknown) and is subsequently incarcerated in a fairy tale style village (filmed on location at the Italianesque resort of Portmeirion in North Wales) where he is subjected to every conceiveable kind of interrogation in order to discover the reasons for his quitting the job. Each of its 17 episodes depicted Number Six in a battle of wills against a new Number Two (each previous Number Two being replaced for failing to break their man). In this new version things are a little bit more ambiguous. In a nice little reference to the original's opening credits, we see Caviezel march into a smart office block and spray paint 'RESIGN' onto a window. What he does for a living isn't explained, but we can guess he doesn't work in an HBOS call centre. Waking up in desertland surrounding the new village (this time shot on location in Namibia, and swapping the Italian atmosphere for a more bleached-out, African holiday resort look) he finds a dying old man (bearing a passing resemblance to an aged McGoohan) being chased by men with dogs. The man dies, Caviezel buries him in the sand, and makes his way to The Village. By way of almost subliminal flashbacks we learn Caviezel is a New Yorker, and that he has met a mysterious woman one evening while out drinking alone. It's all much more subtle than McGoohan's version, and suitably 21st century. I liked it. Fanatical fans of the original will moan and groan endlessly. Great! Let 'em!!