AMC’s The Prisoner: The Problem Is In Bill Gallagher’s Mind

If you are one of the very few people reading this who never saw the original TV series of The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan, you have been leading a deprived life. It’s a series that influenced countless writers and stands as one of the immortal high points of television drama.

I don’t know of any writers who haven’t contemplated what they’d do if they had the chance to update that series.

When AMC said it would be doing so, I did not have a warm feeling inside. I ignored all the pre-show material they put on their website.

I did, however, bite when they released the nine-minute trailer.

And I did an analysis of that here.

I’d watched it so many times before the show premiered that I could cite lines from it — and often did on Twitter.

I wanted to watch the series and judge it for myself, so I didn’t read any of the reviews that sprouted all over the Internet just hours before its premiere. So everything in the following post — for I still haven’t read any of those reviews — is all mine.

Beyond here are spoilers!