Review: Help! I’m Being Held Captive in the Six-Hour Mini-Series "The Prisoner"!

***WARNING*** This review contains some mild spoilers about AMC's The Prisoner.

You people owe me.

When people find out that I review movies and television for a living, they often say something like, “Wow, that’s some cushy deal – getting paid to watch TV for a living!”

What they don’t understand is that I often have to watch things that I’m not necessarily interested in, and I have to watch them all the way through, even if they stink.

Even if it’s a six-hour mini-series.

Such is the case with The Prisoner, AMC’s highly publicized remake of the classic and influential 1960s U.K. series about a man who finds himself being held captive in a mysterious “village” where everyone has a number rather than a name.

AMC's remake airs this Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights at 8 PM. And it’s bad.

But most of you who choose to disregard my advice and watch it anyway will turn it off after the first or second episode. I had to sit through all six goddamn hours.

First things first. Why are we reviewing The Prisoner on this site anyway? Number Two, the man who controls the village, is played by out actor Sir Ian McKellen. And Number Two has an effete, disaffected gay son, played by Jamie Campbell Bower, who is in a secret relationship with another male character.

Neither gay character ends well. If you somehow manage to make it far enough into the series, be prepared to be depressed.

Jamie Campbell Bower

As for the rest of the story, it's straightforward at first: in a vaguely remembered past, a man called Number Six (Jim Caviezel, appropriately vacuous) resigns from a secret agency, only to find himself trapped in a seemingly picturesque village in the middle of a vast desert, a “perfect” small town.

Despite having numbers rather than names, everyone seems to be happy. But upon closer inspection, people are obviously playing roles – fearful that Number Two, who struts around town in a clean white suit watching all, will discover their disloyalty.

The questions come fast and furious: Who is Number Six, and why has he been brought to the village? What’s really going on in the town? If Number Two is number two, who’s number one? What’s with the sinkholes that keep popping up all over the village? And why the hell does everyone have an American accent except for McKellen and his son, who have British accents?

Except for the last one, all these questions do get answers. But you’ll have to sit through six moody, slow-paced, hour-long episodes to get them.

Jim Caviezel’s character is outraged that he’s trapped in the village, unable to escape because of a big white globe that envelopes anyone who tries to leave (as happens in the original series). I could relate, because I was trapped in a seemingly endless mini-series with no escape, not if I wanted to keep my job here at AfterElton.com.

Next Page! So is the ending worth it? (No spoilers!)