"The Prisoner" (remake) - early thoughts ...

... missed it on Saturday night - too busy faffing with photos - but ITV4+1did the business tonight...

OK - only Episode 1 (but I believe only 6 to play with instead of 17) - this opener was called "Arrival" (just like the real thing) - but I'm not convinced at the moment ...

1) Remakes always fill me with dread - the obvious question is "Why ?" Only recently I mentioned on here watching the re-hash of "Assault on Precinct 13" ... and "hash" just about summed that up ... so many other remakes have either been "pants or pointless" ... so probably I went into the start with a slightly "biased" view.

2) It's been "Americanised" - another cause for concern ... "The Village" isn't a village at all ... it's bigger (and has a night club - WTF ?!) - the area around "The Village" is also "bigger" (i.e. a bloody desert) - some tokenist "Brit" slants (kept seeing a Moggy Minor floating around in the background - and the 147 taxi was certainly right-hand drive !)

3) Only seen one blazer (on the dead "93") - the whole idea of "Individual vs Collectivism" loses a lot purely on the lack of blazers/"uniform" dress - and no penny-farthing either !!

4) "The Village" people are not just "people with a secret" (ex-Government agents etc) - they just seem to be people who have had their memories wiped (OK there was a pic of the Statue of Liberty and talk of "dreams", but nowt much else - yet) - and what was with the bomb ?

5) James Caviezel (Number 6) seems to be playing the role more like Jack Bauer out of "Lost" rather than the pure anger that was Patrick McGoohan - put that down to the writer maybe ?? We don't really know where he's come from - something that was fairly obvious in the original (what with the "Danger Man" prequel and the opening credits) ... maybe this will become clearer - eventually ..

It might appeal to some - but I'm not too sure after Episode 1 - I'll stick with it mind ...

Here endeth my effort at being Barry Norman ... maybe I should stick to football !!!
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