Good grief. McGoohan must be turning in his grave.

Hi Kid

Maybe not, McG is on record as stating that .."all human emotions can and should be explored...' he then goes on to explain that in film and theater folks have a choice as to what they see ... only in TV did he feel there was an exception because of "granny and the kiddies". That said, AMC is a cable network soooooo ... might qualify more as film today.

Mcg for instance had the lead in a play called Serious Charge that examined the issues of homosexuality in the 1950's.... the idea that McG was some kind of a super prude is just a myth and not supported by the body of his work in film, theater and TV.... here is a link to a blog comment on McG and religion:

numbersixwasinnocent.blogspot.com/2009/0...nd-religion-sex.html



BCNU

Tommcfearsom

I think that Moor made good points regarding McG's religion. It was funny, I thought, that after he passed away, so very many of the obits I read emphasized what a strong Catholic he was. Maybe that was the case at one time, in the early years. He was raised Catholic by very devout parents. Went to Catholic school. His wife converted so they could be married in the Catholic Church. He sent at least one of his daughters to Catholic school. He received the last rites when he was ill at the beginning of the 1990's. Yet...quotes that I have read from him after that time indicated to me that he had expanded quite a bit on his religious outlook and was not particularly attached to the Catholic Church, at least in any institutional way. The fact that he was cremated (permitted by the Church) but his ashes were retained by the family (not permitted) is evidence of this.

McG was no plaster saint statue. He was a living breathing human being, with all the angst and glory that entails. From what I have read, he seemed to be a man who thought deeply about important things and who directed his life accordingly.

TheKid wrote:
Good grief. McGoohan must be turning in his grave.

I hear ya. If you're quiet enough, maybe we can hear him dry heaving..

For most of Anvil, I enjoyed 909 far more than 6!

You all make good points that I agree with. My complaint is in calling this a Prisoner remake. Mr. McGoohan may well have applauded this series if it had appeared as a new unrelated miniseries. It does, I agree, explore some deep issue about being human, and about living in modern society. Some of these questions spring tangentially from issues raised in the original Prisoner. However, to claim this is a remake and then to change the core message - this I find to be disrespectful and misleading.

The original was first and foremost about society/government/authority stripping away our individuality. ("the cult of the individual," as Number 2 put it in Checkmate). The original Number 6 was an Everyman - we didn't know his name, his job, his reason for resigning - hence he represented all of us, no matter who we were or what we did. In fact, the point was that it didn't matter. It wasn't that certain jobs are less ethical, or that working for the government removes your identity. It was that everyone living in modern society is subject to this dis-identification process, and - even worse - because we don't notice that this is happening, we are complicit in the process.

In other words, we allow our identities to be taken away because we don't fight it. We are in fact responsible for our own loss of individuality. (Which is why, don't you think, Number 1 turns out to be The Prisoner himself?) (And the fact that there is no Number 1 in the remake makes it essentially and profoundly different)

So, the original was about this one thing: the individual.

The remake is about society. Important, profound issues that should be explored. But fundamentally different from the original series. Perhaps the series should have been named differently, and not used the number "6" for the main character. Make it about the Village Now, rebuilt for new times. But don't call it a remake of the original.

It just isn't.

I agree with you @TheKid on that one.

(Also a bit of an interesting twist that this reboot of a franchise is just one of many others...instead of leading the pack, it was joining it in some ways..)

This version seemed to borrow a lot of the same imagery and editing style of the original series, but it definitely felt far less "layered".

I realize it was "only" 6 hours, but perhaps not the best use of 6 hours. I felt zero connection with this 6 that I did with McG's 6 for instance. I had ultimately far more of a connection with 2 than 6.

While we can discuss "Fall Out" to the nth degree (as I'm sure it has), one thing's fairly certain is that 6 (and a version of 2) ultimately managed to achieve victory in his pursuit of the individual.

In this one, he didn't "win" at all...