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!"You can read the full review here.
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.
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.)