Finally watched last night's V and finale of AMC's THE PRISONER

AMC's much-promoted revamp of The Prisoner concluded last night. After watching both hours twice-over now I am going to say that that, acknowledging that while mine is going to be in the minority of opinions, that I very much enjoyed it and thought it was time well spent. And I will likely be getting the DVD of the series when it becomes available. But I will say that AMC way over-hyped The Prisoner. And so much so that I have to wonder how much confidence they had in their own product. Doing "coming up" bumpers before each commercial break did nothing to instill one's faith in this show as a viewer. Without those, I think The Prisoner could have been much more enjoyable. Another reason why I'm looking forward to a DVD set of this.

Meanwhile, ABC aired the third episode of the relaunched V. I watched it from the good ol' DVR this morning. Last week I said that V needs to drastically ramp-up its action and intrigue. Well, it's a funny thing but last night's installment "A Bright New Day" did just that and in spades! The Visitors (in perhaps a thinly-veiled commentary on real-life immigration policies) began receiving passports and visas to travel throughout the country. We discovered that the Visitors had secretly been installing themselves on Earth for at least twenty years. We learned a lot more about the traitors and the words "Fifth Column" were finally used in this V's incarnation. And there were devious plot twists out the wazoo. If V keeps up this kind of tempo, it will almost certainly become the breakout hit of this television season and set itself up as the high-brow science-fiction series of the medium in the absence of Battlestar Galactica and the soon-to-depart Lost. After last night's show, me want more V!

Okay, three hours of television from one night: that's way more than what I'm used to. I'm gonna go read a book or three and compensate.

Categories: abc, amc, reviews, television, the prisoner, v