Saturday 2 August 2008

New Prisoner TV series teaser site


Just how exciting is this? The team behind the remake of The Prisoner (my coverage here) is already providing some fantastic pre-series viral stuff, including this great teaser website:

Seek the Six

(H.T.: TV Spy and The Unmutual). The gist is that you go looking for pictures related to "six" and "six of one". There is one in each of the six groups. When you have clicked all six, Jim Caviezel (Number 6) appears, with "I am not a number" written above his picture. And then the picture of Ian McKellen (Number 2) appears, and you are assigned a number. Mine is Number 260,163. Not quite as memorable as 6, perhaps. Several things are encouraging here. One is the sheer effort that is going into making this reimagination a success. Another is the clear sense already of their capturing the feeling of the original series. Those shots of McKellen and Caviezel look Prisoner-esque. Only think of the head shot of McGoohan that begins and ends every episode. And the pithy sentences that keep appearing on the site when you correctly find a 6 are sometimes from the original series, but sometimes are new phrases that capture its style, "I don't think you want freedom", "Help me to conform, submit" and so on. And it may be my imagination, but lots of those pictures do evoke memories of The Prisoner, not least those of filing cabinets.