The Prisoner could use some rehabilitation

I’m not one of those worshippers of the original series of The Prisoner, nor am I a detractor; I watched some fair portion of the run a couple decades back, liked its style, but haven’t spent much time thinking about it since.

But when it does cross my mind, I think of it not as an unlikely follow-up to a spy series, nor as a work of science fiction with a solvable mystery. It feels, rather, like a rumination on the mysteries of life – that we are all trapped in a world that is not quite what we expected, forced into a role that we thinki is not truly us, that we all want to know who Number 1 is.

For whatever reason, the new version doesn’t feel like the mysteries of life. It feels like the mysteries of Myst, or some other computer game, more stylish than meaningful.  They have a stylish setting, but too often kill the stylishness of the set with pedestrian camera choices. It’s got a high level of “clues”, like the goal is to ultimately unveil the secret. The characters aren’t that fascinating, and there is no sense that the explanation of the secret is actually meaningful rather than something silly to validate the premise.

I’m two hours into the series; I will not be going for the third.

NCIS:LA

Well, it’s a new show, so I figured I’d eventually give an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles a try. Going in, I reckoned it would be just another modern procedural, with a group of quirky but not that interesting investigators (played by a group of respectable actors being underutilized) dredging up clues by using technology that doesn’t quite exist.

Nailed it.

If you’re not already sated by the half-dozen of these currently on TV, here’s another!

This tweet now being turned into a TV series

Had to happen, I guess.

V

With a remake of V, it’s tempting to expect a new title. Maybe VI. I guess they avoided V-2, because they knew that’d be a bomb.

Now, I was around for the original V, but I think I ditched it pretty early on, perhaps even during the original miniseries (for you young’uns out there, the original started with a miniseries and then followed up with an ongoing run, one that didn’t ongo that long.) I don’t remember much of the details from that series, so I can’t recall just which elements are brought forward from that, and which are new. But there are seem key points in the set-up and theme that make it seem like they were very happy with Battlestar Galactica. In this version, we are not only visitd by aliens, but we also learn that (unknown to most humans) the aliens are among us, passing themselves as human in order to infiltrate us – pure new Cylon all the way. And the material with the careful manipulation of the media just felt like more of the Galactica theme. But much of it seems so shallowly done, and while there is legit reason for inclusion of teenage storylines, it still feels like something grafted on for a teen audience. But it’s got people I like, like whotserface from Lost (both this and Flashforward have Lostfolks; what do you want to bet that ABC required them to be willing to make any needed appearances in the final season of Lost a requirement for approving them for the shows?), and Alan Tudyk. Perhaps I will give this another try, a chance to be moving to something interesting rather than obvious.

The Nat's TV Daytime Show

I find myself wondering if there’s any source with a substantial list of the TV show rerun titles.

I think some of the younger readers might now be saying “the what?”, because this is a tradition that seems to have disappeared… but it used to be that some shows that were being rerun in syndication or at some other time than their standard nighttime run would have a different title used for the reruns, to differentiate them. I’m not sure what the goal was (although I have some guesses), but thanks to this I used to see listings or titles for shows like Happy Days Again or CHiPs Patrol. You can still occasionally run into cheap DVDs with The Dick Van Dyke Daytime Show credits. As you can see, the goal wasn’t to obscure what show it was… although Bonanza became Ponderosa in rerun.

I’ve got nothing deep to say about them. They’ve just been on my mind for no good reason.

Crossword time

7:55… not my best, but second best.

But the Times puzzle doesn’t seem to be trying so hard to be hard. Newsday’s Saturday puzzle, I usually end up a few letters shy of solving, after considerable effort.