Anybody watch AMC's re-imagining of The Prisoner this week?

Wow.  And that's being nice.

If you didn't watch it, it's definitely worth checking out.  Especially if you've never seen (or heard of) the original Prisoner television show from the dark ages.  (Okay, maybe it wasn't the dark ages, but it was certainly a long, long time ago.)  The show is repeating this Sunday, or you can grab it online somewhere or you can wait for March to get a DVD.  Either way, it's worth checking out.

However, since my comments are really about how the show was delivered, try to watch it on Sunday if you can.

Continue reading my thoughts on the Prisoner and details about my new show--click "Read More" now!

AMC produced a six-episode miniseries that took us into the world (and mind) of The Prisoner.  Each episode routinely revealed more questions than they answered and pretty much left you wanting to punch something at the conclusion.  Each episode had me speculating and guessing straight through.  In other words, this was some seriously ENGAGING entertainment.  And it helps to have someone to speculate with while watching the show, trust me.

I'll tell you what The Prisoner was not: another brainless, waste-of-time reality show competition that requires no effort to watch and, in return, offers nothing for your hour of time other than the fact that you officially made it through to another hour of your life.  Is engaging television going extinct?  Maybe in places, especially when reality programming is so cheap and easy to produce.  But elsewhere, it's alive and kicking.

There are still shows that reel you in.  Make you think.  Make you laugh.  Make you cry.

Shows that tell a story.  Make you care about something that you otherwise wouldn't have thought twice about.

Do reality shows do this?  I'd say no, but I suppose there's always an exception to the rule.  My point, however, is that scripted television can still be engaging and AMC does a bang-up job delivering it.

And boy did they deliver.

Instead of cramming a monstrous plot into 90 minutes for a feature film, they spread it out over 6 hour long episodes.  And instead of dragging out the mysteries over five 22-episode season, they wrapped it all up in three days.

6 episodes, 3 days.

When I had the thought to write something about this viewing experience, I knew I wanted to talk solely about the experience of journeying the Village and the mind of The Prisoner over the course of 6 episodes and 3 days.  As it turned out, however, it became a perfect way to introduce a project I've been working on for sometime now and plan on rolling out beginning next Monday.

As you might have noticed, my Mondays on YouTube are in need of some solid content.  I was using vlogs and other monologues to begin with, but I really needed a solid production (Fridays will end up being the vlog/random day, should I choose to post).

Enter, The Dirt in Golden Bay.

Golden Bay is a Neo-Mono production in that it is a fictional vlog by a fellow name Troy Jones.  Troy recently moved to a city in South Florida named Golden Bay and he's running a start-up newspaper with the goal of uncovering the "dirt" on the elected officials that run the city.

Let me preface this production by saying this: I've never watched Lost and Golden Bay was being conceptualized/written LONG before I ever sat down to watch The Prisoner.  Not that it shares any elements with these shows, but it is a mystery--a mystery that has innocuous beginnings and VERY unexpected endings.

The reason I'm tying this in with The Prisoner is because after I finished watching the last episode last night, it occurred to me how important teasers would be to Golden Bay.  That's why when I kick off the series on Monday, although I have the first episode taped, it will start with some promos and teasers to help set the scene.

That's really all I have for right now.  Stay tuned, and stay creative!