Solitary Confinement...!

Reimagining’s and Remakes are a bloody annoying thing to get right in TV World!! For every brilliant Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica, there’s an absolute messy failure like Knight Rider or Reggie Perrin. Get the new Show spot-on and you’ll have the Fans literally humping your leg like loveable hounds. Get it horribly wrong, and you’ll have Eggs thrown at your house, your Children beaten up in the Street, and absolutely loads of Hate Mail clogging up your Letter Box (and not all of it Letters)!!

The truth is that Remakes are fragile things. You can either be too true to the original, and basically create a carbon copy that does nothing new whatsoever, and feels like a pointless waste of time and money. Or you can create something horribly original that it has nothing to do with the show from whence it came!! Or worse still, you could just make a really crap remake Show that is neither of the above...

Hence, The Prisoner (ITV1), the latest attempt at destroying people’s childhood memories!! Based on the original 60’s Series of the same name, it follows a mysterious Man who awakens to find himself in an even more mysterious place, known only as the Village!! Designated Number Six, he soon discovers that the Village is not the haven it appears to be, and is more of a Prison than anything else!!
Intrigued?! Then by all means stop reading this Review, click on Play.com and order a Boxset of the entire Original Series on DVD or Blu-Ray!! Because honest to god, you’re better off watching that then this useless excuse for a remake.

Written by Lark Rise to Candleford creator Bill Gallagher, the Mini-Series boasts an excellent, star studded cast. Shame I can’t see any on display. Jim Caviziel as Six has all the steel and presence of a Barbie Doll that’s had its Head removed by a rabid Gopher!! Original Prisoner Star Patrick McGoohan was by far a better lead. At least he didn’t play the part as a generic American action hero, albeit with all the energy of a single Hooker after a full night with an entire Football Team, constantly looking like he’s in desperate need of a nap!! Sir Ian ‘Gandalf’ McKellen is good enough, but it’s nothing we’ve never seen from him before. Again, he just plays the generic charismatic bad guy, which has been done to death in all fictional Media (where have all the non-charismatic villains gone?! I want to see some bad guy stamp on a Kitten and eat a Baby!!!).

The script is dire as well. It’s chocker full of action for the sake of action, as if the writer has set out with the sole goal of giving sleeping viewers (so everyone then) loud explosion induced heart attacks!! The attempt to update the story to fit our post 9-11 society falls flatter then Miley Cyrus’s singing, and any attempt at character development feels forced and unnecessary!! The mystery surrounding the show is none existent, and the new original storyline surrounding Number Two (I know, I found it funny when I typed it) and his Family is boring and predictable!!!

Overall, The Prisoner falls into the camp of failed remakes!! It tries oh so hard to be original, but ultimately feels stale as a result, like watching a ‘Best Of’ Documentary about the Original, in which the most prolific and important interviewee is Johnny Vegas!! It makes no sense!!!!! It could have been the British answer to Lost, but by choosing to be crap, it becomes...well, crap!! Lock it up, throw away the key, and let it rot!!!