skippy the bush kangaroo

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo here, and thanks to the magic of DVR, I have just finished watching the AMC reboot of the seminal 60's show "The Prisoner."

I was all ready to hate it, and strangely enough, I found it quite intriguing.


Big caveat to start: No, it's not as good as Patrick McGoohan's orignial paranoia. No one can touch his startingly original premise (the show was his idea, and he wrote several episodes, and was executive producer on them all). Nor can this new version come close to McGoohan's great defiant approach to the character of Number 6. Also, we must needs give big props to the marvelous actor Leo McKern, who was one of the better Number Twos in that version.

However, as I watched the AMC remake, it occurred to me that, taken on its own merits, this new version had plenty to recommend it, and was quite engaging.

The new version has many of the same tropes as the old: A man wakes up in a new place, the Village, and is told he is Six (no prefix of the word "Number" is used to denote characters in this version; an interesting twist). The man in charge is Two. The inhabitants seem mindlessly content, but totally unable or unwilling to help Six either understand his situation or escape it.

The old standby giant white bubbles ("Rover" as it was known in the old version) keeps folks from leaving the Village, though this time with some sort of Electro-Zap ray. And Villagers leave each other with a hearty "Be Seeing You."

But there's a lot of new ideas and set pieces as well. There's one consistent love interest for Six, a doctor in the Clinic named (or numbered) 313, who appears through out the entire program. And this Village is in the desert, not by the sea shore (the show was shot in Africa, and the endless sand dunes make for a surreal landscape, giving the feeling that even if you get out of the Village and run and run forever, you'll never get anywhere).

Another change: The Villagers all have amnesia, and don't remember (or even believe) that there is any where else in the Universe ("There is only the Village"). And most radical of all, we are shown snippets of Six's back story in civilization (where he worked as an analyst for a large corporation, rather than as a Secret Agent Man like in McGoohan's original). These scenes are intertwined into the current story of Six in the Village.

If I explain any more of the structural changes, I'm in danger of giving away major spoilers of the show. And actually some commentors on the AMC forum point out that this new version owes at least as much to Ursula La Guinn and Jorge Luis Borge as it does to McGoohan.

It was not without its problems, of course. Many commentors online correctly pointed out that it moved slowly, especially in the first episode "Arrival" (quite a bad thing to do. You want to start out grabbing your audience by the throat and pulling them into your world at a rapid clip. This program, alas, did not).

Also, be forewarned: this is not easy-listening television. No multi-tasking, reading the paper, conversation or web browsing while you watch. You've got to pay attention. I'd suggest, as I did, recording it for repeated viewing.

(Another problem mentioned on the forums: the audio frequently is muddled, whether it's the accents, or deliberate "surreal" mixing of tracks, often times I didn't understand words and sentences. One viewer suggests watching with the Closed Captioning feature turned on.)

But if you were willing to stay along for the ride, a definite sense of creepy paranoia and confusing dread evolved in the second episode "Harmony." By the time Six and his supposed brother "Sixteen" have switched sides in their argument about whether they are related or not, you realize that not only is Six unsure of who's who, so are you. And then, when Six tells Sixteen's family of his death, and the family laughs uproariously while they watch the Village's soap opera on TV, a real sense of surreal horror has taken over the whole proceeding.

Two of the greatest things about this new version happens to be the stars: Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellan. I was happily surprised at Caviezel's performance. While McGoohan brought a defiance in his tour-de-force as Number Six, Caviezel's quiet intensity served this new version well. Matching the tone and atmosphere of the Village, with its undercurrent of unseen forces roiling throughout, Caviezel brought the suggestion of violence and rage, rather than surface exposition. All in all it was a quite impressive performance that fit the overall production well.

And what can be said about Sir Ian McKellan, that hasn't been said by more erudite fans than myself? The man who brought us Magneto and Gandalf, as well as one of the more insane Richard III's, and a host of other stand-out performances, was at the top of his form here. A slight smile, hinting at the destruction that he could reign down on those who cross him, a wistful stare into the horizon as he struggled to maintain his control; this man is a genius in his craft (so much so that he got top billing; imagine, Number Two getting his name number over Number Six!).

Bottom Line: Is it as good as the original? No. Is it better than 99% of television now? Definitely yes. And kudos to AMC, home of Mad Men (which underwhelms me, but is the darling of Blogtopia, and yes, I coined that phrase) and Breaking Bad (which I love), for taking more risks in a time of Reality doldrums and Jay Leno cop-outs.

It's re-running starting this Sunday, Nov. 22, on AMC (two hours a night at 10 pm for three consecutive Sundays). If you're game, check it out.

Til then, Be Seeing You.