Reviews

When I'd first heard "P.2" was in the works, shall we say "based on" one of my all-time favorite television series, I'd resigned myself to expect it wouldn't be P.1, couldn't be P.1, and had better not end like P.1.

I believe P.1 fans at heart will be disappointed by an original series.

You know, or have read or been told enough of P.1's premise to brand anything I may report a spoiler. Viewing and staying with either version takes more effort than average, P.2 principally because just not quite as much action or adventure is involved if any is expected.

Then again, the P.2 Village is (perhaps) landlocked and subject to "atmospheric anomalies", hosts children, young adults and a night life, serves alcohol, has palm trees, a telly with rabbit ears in each domicile and a Clinic with silos, and runs a dating service and a bus service named "Escape" to a poolside resort. It is by no means Fiddlers' Green, and it doesn't so much quietly frighten like the original Village as persistently distract.

As for the new Villagers, though he appears in each episode we don't see enough of Ian McKellen, whose Number Two is allowed a past you don't want to explore, a family with a similarly tortured present, and a future at best prismatic. McKellen has a gift for switching from hangdog to hound in a blink.

Jim Caviezel is not Paddy McGoohan by any stretch, and needn't be. Unlike the latter's characterization, from which there truly was no escape, Caviezel's Number Six with a resonant private-sector experience prompts me to ask what to do in his sand-filled shoes. Pain appears his forte; like McGoohan even his smile masks.

This Six has a love interest, perhaps among many, one ably performed by Ruth Wilson, who is suitably fetching when required. Unlike P.1 there are recurring characters without a diminutive butler in sight (only a tease with "dreamers" but a nice touch with the shopkeeper and "talk therapy" team). There are fortunately not too many more, for the only Villagers you think you get to know are the ones most decidedly discontented with their lot.

All this gives rise to the key contextual distinction between the two versions. P.2 confronts interpersonal relationships in an age and culture where they're so readily facilitated and, perhaps unconsciously, just as readily influenced, diverted, warped, shunned, negated, or canceled at the gate.

Ignore the debates about who spies on whom or societal depersonalization. They are trappings. The Cold War raging today isn't Us versus Them but Us versus Us while I fight off I and (waiting to enter the ring and tag) Me Too. If especially fortunate today's viewer might remember but does not live in the Sixties. And admit it, haven't you thought things were better and could be as they were if you could only remember the details and determine how in the Sam Hill it all changed?

This is precisely where P.2's writer hits the nail on its allegorical head. Bill Gallagher tackles P.1's premise head-on and generates something just as topical, timely, and different. Each P.2 episode takes a theme from a P.1 counterpart and turns it in another direction or takes it one or more steps further. There are homages plenty if you want or expect them but after awhile they too distract.

The masterstroke is presenting this Six some challenges over and above learning who truly runs the Village and, of course, escape; namely, who was he before he arrived and what had he done to have warranted the attention? Six isn't the only Villager so challenged. If you regard this angle nothing more than "Lost Lite" or "The Matrix Unloaded" then view or re-view P.1, for in that Village you didn't have to be a spy to know too much.

Could more have been written? Yes. Would you have been able to sit through that? Doubtful.

As for the key stylistic distinction between the two versions, well, take the keys from McGoohan and hand them to Michelangelo Antonioni. No middle ground is offered.

I applaud the inspired choice of location and photography. I'd long and privately "re-imagined" dropping Six onto the Lofoten archipelago. A sufficient cold-war metaphor just short of a gulag, and best of luck escaping let alone finding one's way around. But I can also understand P.2's limited run, for unless you've lived there awhile any desert will quickly deplete you.

P.2 complies with the Law of the Remake on which I've commented elsewhere as an IMDb user. It is not "The Television Event of the Year", but it will linger, whether for reasons good, bad, or royally indifferent. Good television drama should not just strive for but do that. Hat's off to the producers for not only trying but wanting to. If they had sought only the revenue there was so much more and easier to choose from.

The payoff to you for viewing is solely for you to assess. P.1 ultimately strove for that. I will only say this Prisoner also resolves itself and you are free to hold its resolution in similar regard.

If it eases the choice to view, forget P.1 for the moment, or, if that had made an indelible impression (as it did with me), try not to determine the better. The Prisoners are different and NOT the same. Savor both and allow them to make you think and ask more questions of anyone within virtual reach if not of yourself.