Remake of The Prisoner to Air on AMC
By David J. Theroux • Thursday July 30, 2009 10:15 PM PDT • 6 Comments
After forty years, AMC is remaking a six-hour version of The Prisoner, the late Patrick McGoohan’s clever, libertarian, metaphysical, TV mini-series. With the ominous rise of statism and collectivism now in the United States and elsewhere, this program could not be more timely in addressing such issues as privacy and government surveillance, propaganda and mind control, de-humanization and individual rights, modernism and objective truth, good and evil, justice, and much more. To be aired in November 2009, the program stars Ian McKellen as Number 2 and Jim Caviezel as Number 6.
With the enormous success of ABC-TV’s program, Lost, that draws upon such themes in the timeless work of such writers as C.S. Lewis (e.g., The Silver Chair, That Hideous Strength, The Great Divorce, etc.) (see here, here, here, here, and here), The Prisoner similarly explores profound metaphysical and ethical issues sure to capture a major audience. We can only hope that the new series remains true to the themes McGoohan embedded in the original. Here is the preview:
Number 2: “Be seeing you, Number 6.”
Number 6: “I am not a number, I am a free man.”
Tags: Civil Liberties, Entertainment, Integrity, Law, Media, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Police, Socialism, Surveillance, Technology, The State, Utilitarianism, Video 
I do not have high hopes for the remake given its writer’s statement in an interview to the Web site i09.com:
“McGoohan’s piece was based upon the assertion of the individual, and I allowed myself to look at it in the polar opposite way. What happens if the cult of the individual is allowed to run? We’re all obsessed with self, we’re all obsessed with more, and now, ... and me, and gimme... and what happens if that’s affected us, and what if that kind of world, what are the consequences of that? McGoohan says, ‘Look. We live in a world which is authoritarian, and we’ve got to break it.’ What if we live in a society now that’s selfish and dangerous?”
(Full interview here.)
It looks like the new “Prisoner” will stand McGoohan’s individualist, libertarian message on its head. If so, McGoohan never escaped The Village after all.
Franklin Harris | Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Intriguing idea. Predictably engaging performance by the well-cast Ian McKellen. But Caviezel just makes me yawn; I’m not sure the repressed memory angle is a useful addition to the story; and I hope AMC takes on the national security state and the surveillance society as effectively as this material permits it to do—no timidity, please.
Gary Chartier | Jul 31, 2009 | Reply
First, McGoohan really gave the original series its “edge”. Second, since the original series, we’ve had The Truman Show and Pleasantville (and no doubt aficionados can name more).
Marc Sheffner | Aug 1, 2009 | Reply
How odd that The Independent Institute wants the new show to remain a prisoner of the old show.............
McGoohan himself explored the consequences of excessive liberty. It ended up with everyone in the village getting shot and blown up.... Remember?
Moor Larkin | Aug 7, 2009 | Reply
Moor,
McGoohan did indeed explore the consequences of the nihilism of self-absorption (narcissism), echoing the critique of the sophists by Socrates and others who showed that morality is not subjective or situational. Morality is instead a transcendent and objective reality, and the natural law tradition is based on this insight. It is no accident that America’s Founders were all devotees of the natural law as the basis for liberty and the institutions of a free society.
I would recommend “Plato’s Ring in the Sudan: How Freedom Begets Isolation of the Soul,” by José Yulo, as well as C.S. Lewis’s masterful book, The Abolition of Man (also available online here).
David Theroux | Aug 7, 2009 | Reply