6 of one, less of the other

I asked some friends if any had seen the remade series of The Prisoner. One replied: “The new series of The Prisoner is based around a deep, central mystery: how did Ian McKellen get involved in this load of ####?”
That may be a little unfair. Possibly only a little.
The premise of the original, as surely any fule kno: a high-ranking security agent resigns from his job without explanation; is abducted abruptly by parties unknown; and wakes up in the Village, a mysterious community where everyone is known by a number, ruled over by the no-sniggering-please No. 2.
(“Who is No. 1?” / “You are No. 6” – an exchange in the opening credits of each episode that may or may not answer the question.)
They want to know why he resigned. He wants to escape. He passes his time with various escape attempts, being frightfully British and driving the current No. 2 (usually a new face each week) insane, all with different degrees of success.
I missed the first of the new series, watched the second, and thought, yeah, they’ve got it in a typical non-linear post-Lost sort of way. Then I watched the first of the original series, for the first time in ages, and realised how immensely superior it is and always will be in almost every way.
Things the new series does well:
  • Ian McKellen as No. 2, now a permanent fixture in each episode.
  • A bigger and better Village that looks like it could indeed support a sizeable community like this. Some of the denizens have four-figure numbers, broken into convenient couplets like 11-12 rather having to address someone as One Thousand One Hundred and Twelve every time you meet. The original Village was bigged up by clever camera angles, but in the first episode we get to see it from the air and realise how tiny it is. I like the way the new Village even has its own holiday resort, a short bus ride away through the desert.
  • They’ve kept Rover, bless them: the most impractical security system ever but what the heck. (“Why did you think a big balloon would stop people?” / “Shut up! That’s why!”)
Things it does less well … (Note that I don’t say badly because that would be unfair.)
Old No. 6, played by Patrick McGoohan, is rude, cynical, abrasive, thinks nothing of hurting the feelings of other people, and so of course is an excellent hero for a TV series. New No. 6, played by Jim Caz- Cav- him what was Jesus in The Passion of the Christ tries for the Clive Owen blokey vibe but really is quite forgettable.
Fatally, we are getting flashbacks that actually show Nu-6’s life before the Village: we might even be getting the story of why he resigned. Eek! No! The whole point is that we never did find out. The Prisoner was about the telling and not the finding out, because that way everyone could form their own theories, and if McGoohan had gone and told us – assuming he actually knew, which is debatable – then 99% of the audience would have ended up disappointed and it would almost certianly not have become the cult it did. The entire story of 6’s life, or rather, all we needed to know, was told in the opening credits, and that includes the first episode. Everything else that 6 had to say to the world came out through his various adventures. The opening credits took 2 mins 58 seconds, which is probably way too long for today’s ADD generation: but, it means that from the 179th second of the series, 6 was trying to escape. Nu-6 took until about halfway through episode 2 to make vague gestures in that direction. Oh, come on.
No. 2 has a wife and son, or at least, a tender-faced smileless young man (the aforesaid 11-12) who is believed to be his son. Again, no. Just … no.
For all its strengths, life in the new Village is also just too down-to-earth. Inhabitants actually ask fatal premise-puncturing questions like “do you think this man and woman had children and raised a family just so they could confuse you?” The answer to original 6 would have been a resounding “yes!” The series was all about Patrick McGoohan, so, yes, why not? Fact is: it was colourful, surreal and sixties and it can’t be recreated in any other time period.
And finally, though some might call it nit-picking: there’s no tune. Oh, there are closing credits and some kind of music plays over them but, like most such things nowadays, they are designed to be shunted over to one side of the screen so the next programme can be advertised, or an announcer can chat over them, or … look, they’re a contractual obligation for the actors and production crew, that’s all. Whereas in the olden days no episode was over until McGoohan’s face had flown at the camera, away from the Village, blocked at the last minute by bars that clanged shut, and then you’d sat through the credits too, watching a surreal penny-farthing bicycle assemble itself for no readily apparent reason while Ron Grainer’s infuriating tune plays at you with no instrument playing a bar for quite long enough.* Without that level of understanding of the original, any remake is fundamentally flawed and doomed.

*Like this.

The sun brings them out

Languishing at home today with an upset stomach but at least I get to enjoy the election media of the also-rans.
The UKIP leaflet is a tad simplistic in bright, primary colours and looks like nothing so much as a supermarket flyer, especially with that pound symbol that tops and tails it. I expect the small print beneath “Vote UKIP” to add “and we’ll give you a box of washing up powder.”
So, about what you’d expect. This one from the Animal Protection Party is much more fun.
Doctor Death is none other than our very own local MP Dr Evan Harris. He is a vocal supporter of Oxford Uni’s secret animal research programmes – so secret they have vocal supporters. He is apparently pro-fluoride, “a waste product of the aluminium industry” and “of no benfit (sic) to teeth”. He is an “aggressive secularist” (seemed quite a mild one when I met him) who attacks “anyone (particularly Christians) who allow their faith to challenge his views”; and most devastating of all, on page 2 (which I didn’t have the heart to photo) he “uses his position to attack herbal remedies, vitamins and homeopathy”. The swine, the swine, the utter swine.
The implied conclusion I draw from this is that, um, Christians do believe in herbal remedies, vitamins and homeopathy, are against a secular society, and don’t use fluoridised toothpaste? Oh dear. Where do I hand my faith in?
I have no beef at all with Dr Harris. I like the fact that when I hear of him in the public media he’s generally doing something sensible and pro-science. A colleague at work, who is a school governor, tells me he’s not that hot as a constituency MP: missed appointments, unanswered letters and so on, in lamentable contrast to hispredecessor, who may have been all for teaching more hellfire in RE to combat youth delinquency but at least answered his letters. I can only say that of all the MPs I’ve had representing me, he is the only one who has ever actually turned up on my doorstep – and that wasn’t even in an election year. I forget what he was canvassing about but I was impressed.
I also know what he looks like, which is more than I can say for our Animal Protection Party candidate unless the latter bears a strange resemblance to a tortured monkey; and, possibly uniquely for a Lib Dem, he has managed to upset someone. Bonzer!

Victory of the Angels, failure of the BBC

So, last week’s Dalek blip was just clearing the pipes for this week’s Angel winfest. They’re back. River is back (if, in the logic of timey-wimey wibbly wobbly, she ever went away). Moffat is back. All is good. “Time of the Angels” bears the same relationship to “Blink” as Alien did to Aliens: not just more of the same but a larger-scale, different approach to the same enemy that makes it a separate entity to be enjoyed in its own right.

Especial points to note. The Church Militant of the fiftieth century, bizarrely armed with P90s as modelled by SG1. The traditional, old-school assistant gets into peril scene, with the modern sensibility of the assistant also solving the problem. Moffat’s cheerfully logical, thought-through attitude to the whole nonsense of time travel thing. Possibly the first ever mention on-screen of the TARDIS noise, done in a way that was hilariously funny (I have often wondered why a machine that is designed to blend into the background inconspicuously also makes enough noise to wake the dead whilst doing so.) And, for the first time in a Moffat script, people dying.

But please can the BBC identify and shoot the moron who thought it was a good idea to put an animated Graham Norton cartoon on screen during the last 30 seconds as the episode builds to a climax, to advertise the ghastly reality-TV-showbiz-whatever load of twaddle he perpetrates with Lloyd Webber. For reasons I will come to this didn’t affect me as badly as it might, but I’m outraged on principle and I’m not the first to be irritated.

It’s worrying that there are people working at the world’s greatest public service broadcaster who fail to grasp the fundamental difference in the natures of Dr Whoand Who Wants to be a Friend of Dorothy or whatever it’s called. The latter is mindless froth designed to be dipped in and out of at ease. The former is a carefully constructed drama with a beginning, middle and end that people want to watch as an uninterrupted whole. As it is, the Beeb’s scheduling people regard it all as homogenised televisual product to be stuffed into the available Saturday evening slots, with as much discretion and acuity as Microsoft’s unlamented paperclip: “it looks like you’re watching TV on a Saturday evening. You will want to watch this too.” These clods cannot comprehend that I would watch Dr Who whenever it was shown, or on catch-up if unable to make the original broadcast, whereas I would pay good money not to have to watch Graham Norton ever. (Actually with one exception: he was very funny as Father Noel.)

The reason it didn’t affect me directly was because of subtitles … I don’t know if it’s old age or what, but my ears or my brain or both sometimes just cannot process rapid, quick-fire dialogue like they used to. Sometimes I have to put the subtitles on. Sad but true. However, the subtitles did blot out all but either end of the Graham Norton animation. My outrage still stands.

If no one looks at Graham Norton, perhaps he’ll go away.