An allegory for bad TV?

The British TV network Sky One is going to remake The Prisoner.

Damien Timmer, who has been lined up to executive produce the show for Granada, told Broadcast the new series would take "liberties with the original" and would not retain its arty feel.

"Although it will be a radical reinvention, it will still be a heightened show," he added.

...

Bill Gallagher, the writer of the BBC's crime drama Conviction, is reported to be writing the new version.

This link (scroll down a few entries on that link) says something about the new version lacking the arty "pop" feel of the original. And if that's the case, as every fan of the bizarre 17-episode 1967 serial knows, it's a damn shame!

They’re also not filming in it in Portmeirion, Wales, but I’m sure the production company can find an equally odd setting, assuming they’ll set their minds to it.

The original invited – nay, begged – anyone with a theory degree to weigh in with allegorical, semiotic, or otherwise ill-advised interpretations. And a grand time was had by all. For the record, Patrick McGoohan, the lead actor and a creator of the series, has pretty much disavowed all kinds of symbolism and statements that folks have tried to attribute to it. So, I love it because it drives everyone - including me - fucking nuts, and if there's any statement to make, it's that absurdity has its own, sometimes sinister, logic.

The Prisoner centers on a British spy who’s kidnapped to an isolated community called “The Village,” where the faux-democratic administration and its agents among the other inmates use hook and crook to learn why he resigned from his job. Has he sold out? Will he sell out? Can he be bought? For his part, the Prisoner tries to learn who runs the island, without even a hint of whether it's a project of his own government.

Oh, and everyone goes by a number, and there are crazy big white balls that guard The Village, and everyone sells out everyone, and the government knows way too much, and, and, and ...

Go rent the original before it's sullied.

(At least it's not a US company doing it!)

Another fansite, Six of One.

Antidote to NYC-Boston Train Stuffiness

Met a guy on the train from NYC to Boston today, name of Anthony Herrera, known as TV's James Stenbeck on "As the World Turns."

He's a cancer survivor, it turns out, on his way to a cancer conference near Harvard (sorry I don't remember the name just yet), and since I was on my way to something similar, we got to talking. (That's him testifying in front of an Appropriations Subcommittee about stem cell research.)

Speaking in bold, actorly tones, Herrera told me about his wrenching, fucked-up encounter with Mantle Cell Lymphoma, chemo and full-body radiation treatment, an ordeal that partly involved several days of "shitting blood," as he aptly put it. During the conversation, I'd caught the glances of some of the other businessy travelers, and got some gallows humor contrasting an earlier exchange two execs were having about marketing strategy or some other inane shit.

Anyway, he was writing an article about stem-cell treatments and cancer for a Republican journal of some kind - he generally wanted to make people think about what you will do if you're desperate to save your own life. Herrera said he'd gladly have iced pretty much anyone during the worst part of his agony, if he thought it would help. Folks with a moral block against stem-cell research are just one terminal disease from changing their minds, he said.

Word.

Now, I don't feel like Herrera and I see eye to eye, politics-wise - although he had me at "Manhattanites are some of the most provincial people in the world" - but I respect straightforwardness. He expanded his critique of objections to stem-cell research to ethicists and policymakers.

It should be clear that desperation cannot be policy. As much as I deplore the 'culture of life', it's about time everyone grapples with what defines a human being. No - not a human 'life', that's evasion.

Roe v. Wade defines human 'life' in terms of its viability - a developing embryo becomes human at the point that it becomes possible for it to survive outside the womb. That's a goalpost that moves with technology, and it has nothing to do with what makes humans - or any other animal, for that matter - worth defending.

There are links to his book and a poetry website with Willie Nelson (!) on his home page.

Stay tuned

This is the first post, so let me figure out how this works and what I want to do with it, kindly.