If I were to tell you that one of my best friends died yesterday I would feel I was exaggerating somewhat, because the sad truth is I had not been in touch with Tony for some years. We never had any kind of a fight, or a falling out, but I tend to get wrapped up in the things that are right in front of my face, such as making a television show, writing blogs, conducting business, and publishing books. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, you might say. Or that could just be a lame excuse for not taking care of the things that truly matter, such as sending an occasional email to an old friend whom I knew to be, at times, a bit lonely.

Tony and I were both huge fans of Patrick McGoohan’s legendary television show, The Prisoner, and it was at a Prisoner convention that we first met. Some of you might think: “How geeky!” but that is just because you don’t know any better. Much of The Prisoner was filmed in and around the idyllic private village/hotel of Portmeirion in North Wales. It was the life’s work of the groundbreaking Welsh architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who was a pioneer of planned communities, an early voice for conservation and the National Trust, and a saviour of spectacular architecture. During the middle part of the Twentieth Century, Clough purchased, received, and rescued numerous pieces of beautiful, important, or whimsical architecture—ranging from a statue of Atlas to an entire town hall—and resurrected them among the quiet trees and rhododendrons of Portmeirion. Noel Coward was a fan of the place and wrote his masterpiece, Blithe Spirit, there. McGoohan filmed a few episodes of his earlier TV series Danger Man (known as Secret Agent in the US) at Portmeirion, and then used it as the primary location for The Prisoner, which just added to the latter’s mysterious and moody atmosphere.

Portmeirion is a site of architectural and historical importance, which means it is preserved almost exactly as it was when The Prisoner was filmed there in the late 1960s. As a result, fans going to a Prisoner convention can dress up in costume, recreate favorite scenes from the show, and generally immerse themselves in the magical place where it all happened. It would be like Star Wars fans being able to hold a convention on the planet Tatooine.

I met Tony Reeve at Portmeirion in the 1980s. I was walking up to the Town Hall (which doubled as a pub) one evening, and noticed some friends talking to a very tall fellow. At the time, I was working in the comics industry and one of my pals said: “Hey Geoff, did you know that Tony here is a cartoonist?” I asked him to tell me more but he politely declined several times, gently insisting that I could not possibly have heard of his work. I pressed back, gently as well, until he admitted that he drew a little strip called P-Nuts which was a parody of The Prisoner executed in a vaguely Charles Schultz-like style. It was one of my favorite strips of the era and when I bellowed something like: “You’re THE Tony Reeve!” he looked a bit shy, and was convinced someone had put me up to the whole thing as a prank. And Tony was a little shy at times. He was also overly tall, and quite boney, in a sort of Joey Ramone way. He had a really big chin and a pockmarked face, and I guess nobody could ever claim that he was handsome in a conventional way, but he was very striking, had a heart of gold, was brilliant, extremely funny, and made fun of his awkward body in a way that endeared him even more to his friends. As if that wasn’t enough, poor old Tony had a bad heart, terrible eyesight, and other health problems, which he tended to make fun of, rather than complain about.

Since the year 2000, my trips back to the London of my youth have become infrequent. My mom died, my brother moved to the States, and my father relocated to Ireland. I lost touch with most of the guys I had grown up with, but Tony remained one of only two close friends that I’d make a special effort to see whenever I returned to London. Tony loved cinema, art, science fiction, comics, and could always be counted on to go with me, at short notice, to a new and off-the-wall art exhibition, or the opening of the latest Cronenberg film. Tony came to visit me in the States as well, and he was equally entertaining on either side of the Atlantic—a quietly irreverent intellectual of the first order.

Tony was best known as a political cartoonist and worked for Private Eye, Punch, and The Spectator in the UK. I think The Independent published his work too. He was interested in everything and was one of the few people in my entire life with whom I could talk for hours without getting bored. He kept up with politics (as a satirical cartoonist I suppose he had to) and had plenty of opinions about what was wrong with the British Government, the way in which London was managed, and the arts scene, and he didn’t mind sharing those opinions in a humorous, sophisticated, and vaguely anti-establisment manner, which is just one of many reasons why we got along so well. All of which demands an answer to the question: Why don’t we make time for the things that are really important in life? In the time that I spent messing around on useless Facebook—just this past weekend—I could easily have sent Tony an email, or mailed him a copy of my book, which he would have enjoyed, and would doubtless have found a way to tease me about.

Money was usually a bit tight for Tony, but he managed to make a living doing his artwork, all the while with that terrible eyesight, which I found truly amazing, much like a mechanic running a successful garage with two broken hands. In the 1990s Tony had a pacemaker fitted and he was surprised by how loud it was. “You mean, you can hear it inside your body?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I had trouble sleeping after they put it in, but you sort of get used to it.”

I suggested that he do an autobiographical comic strip about his experiences called The Ticking Man.

© Tony Reeve

One night I had a vivid dream in which Tony devised an experimental comic series called Mr. Upside-Down. In the strip the layout was as you’d expect it to be, except for the fact that the nutty protagonist walked around the wrong way up, with his feet on the “ceiling” of the cartoon panels, while everyone else was where they should be, according to the unforgiving laws of gravity. It was strange, funny, and absolutely captivating. Well, at least in the dream. When I saw Tony next, in the waking world, I related this story to him and told him he should actually create the strip in real life.

“No, you should do it,” he said. “It’s your kind of thing. But if you do draw it, I ought to get royalties because it was my idea.”

“But it was only your idea in my dream, so it’s still mine.”

“No,” Tony Replied. “Even though I was a figment of your imagination at that moment, I was still based on the real me, so it’s still my idea, even if the idea came from my head, in your dream.” He was joking, of course, but he could always be counted on to debate using existential humor, and so I agreed that if I ever developed Mr. Upside-Down, I would pay him a royalty.

It’s too late for any of that now. Tony died of heart failure yesterday, and—as always seems to be the case with tragic events like these—I was just thinking about him over the weekend. You see, I’m supposed to go back to London in a couple of weeks, on business. It’ll be my first visit in years and I thought how great it would be to get together with Tony again. Maybe revisit the Tate Modern, which was a favorite haunt of ours, or go see some band he’d discovered, or catch a weird indie film that I’d never heard of.

I didn’t even know that Tony had been in hospital for a month. A whole month! He was scheduled for heart surgery, but was fed up with the pain he’d endured as a result of numerous earlier operations, so he declined. They put him on a ton of pain killers and sedatives and he slipped away. And that was Tony. Defiant right up to the end.

I could barely bring myself to look at Tony’s website today, but it is a testament to his sense of humor that the shark cartoon still made me laugh out loud. And so, dear friend Tony, I hereby assign to you, in perpetuity, all rights to Mr. Upside-Down, just in case you want to work on it—you know—some other time. I’m sure it’ll be brilliant.

Be seeing you.

Text and photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. Illustrations © by Tony Reeve.
All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

This review contains spoilers. Last week I looked at the history of the original Prisoner television show and, in particular, its beautiful and enigmatic primary location, Portmeirion. I am not a number, I am a free man, so I will freely admit that I sat through all six hours of AMC’s Prisoner remake (okay, they called it an “interpretation,” whatever), loaded as it was with interminable advertisements for cars, palm-sized telephones, and other things you don’t need.

In the plus column the cast was, for the most part, rather good, particularly and not surprisingly the mighty Ian McKellan who is a towering talent and always a treat to watch. The production values were high, the locations lush, and the series itself did have a few memorable moments, but only a few.

The first two episodes were rather dull and I thought to myself: “Well, they’re just setting the scene, it’ll get better.” The second two episodes were also rather dull and I said to myself: “They’re saving all the action for the end.” The final two episodes were also rather dull and then I had nothing left to say to myself.

Portmeirion, the intriguing primary location for the original "Prisoner" series, was replaced by desert landscapes in AMC's remake

A major flaw is James Caviezel‘s portrayal of Number Six. He showed none of the sarcasm, wit, or humor that the great Patrick McGoohan brought to the original. McGoohan’s Number Six is fiercely independent, confident, and determined, but he’s also mischievous and complicated. He’d wander around The Village, knowing he was under surveillance, smiling at hidden cameras like a wily cat, just to confuse his watchers. He had the ability to make his enemies think he was up to something even if he wasn’t. Viewers believe that McGoohan’s Number Six can outsmart a small army of captors, and he turns the tables on his enemies so slowly and craftily that the viewer doesn’t really notice until Six has the upper hand and begins to destabilize The Village. However, my biggest issue with AMC’s remake is that it is just so sadly predictable. By the second episode it’s obvious that The Village is some sort of creation managed by the evil corporation that Caviezel’s Six once worked for. What a tired cliché, and the idea of “duplicate” personalities from the real world, living in The Village construct has been done before (and done better) in the groundbreaking science fiction film Tron as well as William Gibson’s masterful Neuromancer. Where is the mystery in the new Prisoner? One of the beauties of the original is that we never fully understand what is going on. As McGoohan’s Six says in “Many Happy Returns”: “I have a problem too. I don’t know which side is running The Village.”

So, in an attempt to, I suppose, update the original AMC took the easy way out, pitting Caviezel’s unimaginative Six against an Orwellian corporation, and then further slowed down what little excitement there is with an endless series of annoying flashbacks. The remake is largely a character drama, with precious little action. We don’t get to enjoy the ingenious and relentless escape attempts carried out by McGoohan’s Six, and Caviezel’s Six just isn’t engaging enough to hold the viewer’s attention as he participates in a halfhearted battle of wits with McKellan. Christopher Eccleston of the new Dr. Who series was, at one point, slated to play Six in the remake, and that I would have loved to witness! Eccleston is exciting, dangerous, and unpredictable and could have held his own against McKellan.

I fully appreciate that the new series is an original work and it should be judged on its own merits, rather than mercilessly compared to the original. That being said, if you have the gall to remake one of the most adored and influential series in television history, then you had better be prepared for the comparisons anyway. It’s unavoidable.

The verdict? AMC’s remake gets two stars out of five and it would have been only one without Ian McKellan. Patrick McGoohan is, and always will be, the real Number Six. Sorry AMC, I won’t be seeing you.

I know, silly question. Patrick McGoohan’s masterful, provocative, and visionary series from 1967 will hopefully always be one of the benchmarks against which great television (and social commentary) is measured. Phrases like “Who is Number One?” and “I am not a number, I am a free man,” have percolated into the collective consciousness, and almost everyone who had a TV in the ’60s or ’70s remembers “that show with the howling white balloon chasing the guy on the beach.”

End title logo from the original "Prisoner" televion show. © ITC

With AMC’s Prisoner “interpretation” making it’s debut tomorrow, and being billed (by AMC) as “the television event of the year,” the real question should probably be: “Why bother remaking one of the finest programs of all time?” While you’re at it, why not remake Casablanca as a hip-hop musical? Actor James Caviezel, perhaps best known for his leading role in The Passion of the Christ, has the biggest of shoes to fill, but roles as contradictory as Jesus Christ and Number Six do, I suppose, make for an impressive resume.

The Village flag flying over Portmeirion

To say I am a Prisoner fan is a bit like saying War and Peace is a large tome. At the risk of coming off as some sort of crazed fandom nerd, I will admit that I have many times journeyed to Portmeirion. The mystifying primary location for the 1967 Prisoner, Portmeirion was the life’s work of brilliant Welsh architect, town planner and conservationist Clough Williams-Ellis. Clough had a penchant for saving, as he called them, “fallen buildings” (he meant “fallen from grace,” not necessarily “fallen down,” though he did purchase the occasional pile of rubble and resurrect the original structure in all its glory). During the first half of the Twentieth Century, Clough rescued interesting or architecturally beautiful structures from various parts of Europe and relocated them to an isolated and strikingly lovely peninsula in north Wales. He was a man who really loved his work.

Portmeirion is, today, a rather chic and exclusive hotel complex. It is “listed” as a protected site of architectural and historic importance and is preserved pretty much exactly as it appeared in the original show. When you drive down that long, winding, tree-lined road, and pass under a pair of arched and pastel-colored Georgian residences, you cannot help but feel that you are entering the actual Village. It is thrilling and more than a little freaky. Six of One, the official Prisoner appreciation society, used to book the entire “town” of Portmeirion for one week each year and stage a dazzling Prisoner convention, complete with scene reenactments, most notably the human chess game. I attended several times and it was an extraordinary experience, almost as if the Prisoner was real.

The Logical Lizard (center in captain's hat) participating in the human chess game at the "Prisoner" convention 1988 in Portmeirion

The black-and-white action series Danger Man (Secret Agent in the USA) was McGoohan’s precursor to the Prisoner, and Portmeirion was used several times as an “exotic location” in that series; one time even standing in for a Mediterranean seaside town. The idea for the Prisoner must have been brewing in McGoohan’s questing mind during those days, as there are a number thematic similarities between the earlier series and his 1967 masterpiece—notably the chilling Danger Man episode “Colony Three.” British TV impresario Lord Grade of ITC Entertainment believed in McGoohan and trusted him enough to take huge a gamble: Grade funded 17 expensive, complicated, feature film-quality episodes of the sometimes incomprehensible but always engrossing Prisoner. McGoohan chose Portmeirion as the main shooting location for his finest work and it’s rather wonderful that you can visit the place today and experience its beauty, magic, and strangeness just as the cast and crew did back in 1967.

Members of Six of One, the official Prisoner appreciation society, re-enact the election scene from the "Free For All" episode of the original "Prisoner"

So, back to the important question: Why remake one of the most unique and memorable works ever to grace a television set? To give a modern take on a classic show (not likely, the Prisoner is timeless)? Because they can? To make it more accessible (read: easier to understand) for contemporary short-attention-span audiences? For the money? Can’t think of a good new story idea? It doesn’t really matter. I’ll be honest and say I am genuinely looking forward to seeing what they’ve done with my all-time favorite TV series, and I’ll be tuning in on Sunday evening with an open mind, albeit prepared, as best I can be, for a barrage of commercials during the broadcast.

I find Caviezel an odd choice to play the indefatigable, confident, autonomous and almost rabidly independent Number Six, but maybe we’ll be surprised and like him, just like one day maybe we’ll actually understand what happened in “Fall Out,” the final episode of the original. In the plus column, the great Ian McKellan is playing Number Two and that alone has to be worth watching. And, as journalist Scott White noted in the Canadian Press: “The new six-part miniseries is a chance for a whole new generation of viewers to discover the original show.” That has to be a good thing any way you cut it.

All 17 episodes of the 1967 Prisoner are available online at amctv.com but they should really be seen in their full and almost cinematic grandeur, so if you’ve never experienced the original, do yourself a favor and get it on DVD.

Be seeing you.

Photographs © by Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.