And for that matter… BUCK ROGERS?
As I understand even BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is getting not only a big screen reboot but also a continuation of the tv reboot via Sam Esmail (MR. ROBOT).
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I remember the last attempt at Flash Gordon, that dreadful Sci-Fi Channel series to took it all far too seriously. Any future attempt needs to be willing to embrace the campy and ridiculous. Some things just aren’t meant to be ground.
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General comment - big fan of The Prisoner and decided for the holiday season to re-watch once again (if you don’t own it, you can find it on Amazon Prime). Now, old Christopher Nolan is on the record as a big fan of the show (has often been linked to a re-boot), and so I was watching the episode “A, B, & C” (Nos. 2 & 14 attempt to manipulate No. 6’s dreams) and realized, hey, Inception is just a drawn-out knock-off of that episode.
Being harsh of course, but I can imagine Nolan(s) sitting around thinking, we can flesh that idea out…
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Reminded me of the fact that I’ve got this wonderful DVD box from 2006 (containing four Prisoner episodes that hadn’t been shown on German TV before) sitting on my shelf. Haven’t watched it for years and probably would, now, but I’m just about to start with the second season of Mandalorian. 
But I still took the box set off the shelf, flicked through the (extensive) booklet and started musing. I wasn’t very fond of the 2009 miniseries with Jim Caviezel, but if someone had the idea to do a remake now, my perfect cast for No. 6 would be - as bland as it sounds - Daniel Craig. Can’t say what it is, but Craig’s portrayal of Bond reminds me somehow of McGoohan doing No. 6.
Thoughts?
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I have absolutely no time for the 2009 miniseries, though to be fair it was caught between a rock and a hard place. If you go to Portmerion then you leave yourself too close to the original and open to criticism. You don’t, and you leave yourself open to criticism for not “getting” the original. The Prisoner is such of time and of place that re-interpretation is a Catch-22.
That said, re-casting it and telling new stories in the same style as the original might be the only way to go (a continuation, rather than a re-interpretation). As for 6, I agree you need someone with DC’s smoldering, anti-establishment persona, power and attitude hidden under a charming, but oh-so-clearly, a facade.
Much like Bond, The Prisoner very much rides on the leading man, and McGoohan as 6 was as unique a performance as there’s been - on TV and on the big screen. I’m racking my brains as to who else would be great if dropped into it (I’m sure there’s some tantalizing suggestions out there).
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Craig would be a good fit for No 6 - but I have trouble at the moment to think of an intelligent way to revisit The Prisoner without the attempt falling flat. Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes (and of course THE TRUMAN SHOW and more recently Westworld) already picked up the theme of being trapped in a surreal concept - with a sentimental nod to our generation’s youth even - and the Kafkaesque core of it has now become the new normal in an ever more rabid sect culture. In a straight remake the Village might look surprisingly harmless; almost a place of reason and sanity compared to what some real life nutters live in these days…
So the goal would be to find a twist on the original that doesn’t just make it all the result of a mind dealing with its own trauma. Yet it needs a kind of fantastic element so it’s not simply Prison Break. Maybe the theme of ‘escape’ shouldn’t even figure at first and ordinary life in the Village should be explored more, perhaps also by a number of different characters whose backstory explains what it’s all about?
Wait…that would be Lost then, no?
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That would be Westworld, the story of Maeve (Thandie Newton) and Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) as it plays across the first 2 seasons in particular would be best described as that.
It is a problem with approaching The Prisoner in a modern context - it was SO influential, a modern audience has seen everything in it in other series.
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There are bits and pieces of The Prisoner in so many shows and films - INCEPTION! - and the bare concept is almost too low key to keep a modern audience intrigued for longer. Even the fans of the original show have turned to discussing the ever-present questions whether Number 6 is John Drake, why he resigned and if he’s really Number 1, too.
That’s the core of the show and it has branched out over time into the mainstream. One could say the entire search for ‘meaning’ in popular entertainment is at least partially influenced by the meta textural nature of this 60s event that was decades ahead of its time.
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It´s a problem most influential narratives have - these days, with the onslaught of content, everything gets quoted, plundered and remixed. If you return to the original idea people not familiar with will consider it stale or even worse: a copy of the copy. “John Carter” anyone?
But the idea of Craig in “The Prisoner” is not bland at all - he really has that kind of persona that would fit perfectly. And maybe that’s why Tom Hardy also would fit and gets often mentioned as someone who could play Bond.
Isn´t the Bond character, at least in the Craig era, maybe the Dalton era, too, trapped in his own trauma as well?
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Agreed with all on The Prisoner - it has provided the spark for so many other creations that any re-imagining would seem unfairly derivative.
I’m obviously a huge fan of the show, and would love for it to be re-introduced to new generations - how about a “Psycho-style” shot-by-shot remake…??? 
With all seriousness - if the 2009 re-make showed, there are in fact some ideas in Hollywood that should be left entirely alone.
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All of this talk of THE PRISONER made me seek it out on Amazon Prime (thanks for the heads up plankattack). I watched “Arrival” last night, and was as enthralled as ever. I saw it as a teenager–first on commercial television, and then in my sophomore year of high school it was shown on the local public broadcasting station–the complete series with the episode “Living in Harmony” included (which had not been shown before). I would discuss it with my English teacher whose favorite episode was “The Schizoid Man.”
Exactly. THE PRISONER is sui generis. It can serve as an inspiration for other works, but to remake it would be akin to remaking IMITATION OF LIFE or ALL ABOUT EVE or THE SEARCHERS–all of which have inspired filmmakers to create their own masterworks.
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The Prisoner came at a unique moment where the spy craze kicked off by Bond had started showing cracks. McGoohan was already hugely popular with a derivate that had started showing doubt in a few cases - and then is pulled from one show into another that only used the spy theme for its own questioning of events and topics.
The mainstream audience that wouldn’t show much appetite for an adaptation of The Process or The Castle willingly went through the Kafka motions with the spy who wouldn’t divulge why he resigned nor couldn’t find out why he was trapped.
Some filler episodes from Danger Man were adapted to the new format that was somehow meant to be sci-fi spy. But nobody was actually prepared for a mystery that wouldn’t be solved satisfactorily at the end. Which was of course the whole point of the exercise from the start.
This was so radically unheard of that it actually is still considered unsatisfactory when Nolan gives INCEPTION an end open to interpretation. And Lost’s producers didn’t dare leaving their audience without giving them a consolation price simply for hanging on six years.
As was already stated above, a remake of The Prisoner was bound to fail. Simply because we cannot recreate the unique circumstances of that era and because the audience of today comes with a different mindset. Filter bubbles and propaganda, quasi-religious doomsday preaching from every corner of the Internet are the usual diet people consume with their breakfasts.
The individual today is closer to Number 6 than ever before - but none of it is a dealbreaker for folks. Questions and themes of The Prisoner are discussed every day on the feuilleton and opinion pages of newspapers while the eternal war of good vs bad - GOOD!!! vs BAD!!! - rages on in fora and the festering ulcer of human depravity that boils on in the various iterations of chanX and its ilk.
The Village has gone global.
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First–this is so good Dustin.
+1,000 %. McGoohan said that No. 1 was the dark side of No. 6, the part that tries to control them and must be fought. In my view, today’s No. 1 are all the desires we are encouraged to indulge and cultivate. But as Dustin notes, fulfilling pleasures can be so nice/addictive that a person does not mind the confinement they create.
Through being built and cultivated internally in each person. We are all pawns.
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Sticking the landing has forever been the bane of series/serial. I do believe The Prisoner was the first TV show to internationally diverge from what the audience were expecting. Didn’t The Fugitive ultimately “get his man”?
But ever since (and I didn’t watch Breaking Bad) it is the rarest of series’ that has left “everyone” satisfied. The Sopranos most definitely upset a few folks, the Battlestar reboot had some corners of the internet whining, and of course the aforementioned lost.
I am extremely fond of series 1 of Westworld, and if it had ended there, I would’ve been more than happy. But the more the episodes (shoot, I thought Seinfeld’s finale was awful so there you go), the harder it is to close out.
I have similar thought about the limited mini-series (4-6 episodes) in that I myself find the resolution so much less satisfying than the intrigue of the set-up.
Kind of spoiler here, if you haven’t seen the show…
With The Prisoner (Amazon also have the documentary In My Mind - an interview with McGoohan) McGoohan says “getting Sean or Roger” (his words exactly!) might have been what the audience expected with the big reveal, but ultimately I think that if that had been the case, then the series would just be another archive from the 60s. Instead it will forever be watched, analysed, discussed, which for TV is the closest to immortality you can get. And I think Dave Chase knew that The Sopranos finale would guarantee the same for his creation.
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Totally! The Prisoner was the first, that I can think of, that insisted the audience took its own interpretation
(please correct me so I have something new to watch - Spellbound would be the closest with dream sequences from 2 artists that asked questions of your perception) Both Nolans’ have taken it to Hitchcock level of going “are you sure?” after giving a firm ending, but I genuinely can’t think of anything that so purposefully left any solutions up to the viewer.
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TV shows I loved watching:
The Sopranos
Breaking Bad
Lost
24
Dexter
I enjoy other stuff but don’t have the same attachment level as I did with these.
Gave the first two episodes of The Third Day a look, but couldn’t get into it.
When Disney Plus gets all these new Star Wars shows they’ve announced on their platform I’ll be buying a subscription. The Kenobi project interests me the most.
2:40…
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I can hear all the development people say: But… but… but… the audience wants to identify, we need to know everything about the character up to the name of his third cousin‘s neighbour‘s pet turtle.
No, you don’t.
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To be fair to Nolan, since Memento, he’s been telegraphing everything to audiences…!!!
Yes…that’s exactly what’s said about the work of Nolan…he’s so obvious to the point of talking down to audiences.
On a related note can you believe he has been spoiling both who Batman is and how Dunkirk ends?!?!?
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