Posted by
Daniel Crandall on Saturday, December 30, 2006 2:07:08 AM
Lord, I hope not.
AMC is slated to air the remake the late 60s TV series
The Prisoner in 2008.
Conservative afficionados of Popular Culture should certainly know about this classic science fiction series from that aired 1967 - 68. The tagline (as reported at IMDB.com) is "
No Man Is Just A Number." If that doesn't warm the heart of Reagan conservative I don't know what will.
I'll keep an eye out for this, but I'm leary of what the remake's creators will do with the show's themes. The original series was about a resigned secret agent determined to escape an island prison while the prison keepers were determined to find out why he resigned ("I don't want to do this anymore" isn't good enough in the secret agent biz).
According to
this BBC report, "
The producers of the new series said they were aiming
for a "radical reinvention" of the series and intended to take
"liberties with the original". Uh oh. Cue threatening and ominous music.
Battlestar Galactica was "reinvented" and for many it is the best show on television. I believe it is science fiction's answer to "Law and Order", a show that tries way to hard to be "timely". BG gives a heavy-handed SF treatment to issues clearly related to our war against Islamo-fascism only we aren't rooting for the good guys. In fact, in the new BG it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. No one denies that BG is about Iraq. In fact, most praise it for its "story of war, insurgency and the struggle for freedom"
. Do we really need a another show that may leave us "rooting for [suicide bombings] even as [we] recoil in horror at [these] actions"?
Let's just hope that the new Prisoner is not given a "timely" treatment as well.