TV Series Idea: The Prisoner 2020
The Prisoner, from the 60s, is one of my all time favourite TV shows, and very prescient. However it has numerous flaws, including the stupid suffocating balloon.
It could do with a major reimagining, while keeping the core aspects:
- everything is monitored
- lead is a hero spy
- they try to indoctrinate him
- he relentlessly tries to escape
Whether you stage it in Portmeirion again, or some isolated village, or a city suburb… you need a believable mechanism that stops him escaping. Wayward Pines had monsters. It can’t be a bloody balloon.
Ideas:
- an implant that doses you with heroin when you reach the perimeter
- Robocops
- demons or aliens – it would add a layer to things
- retinal implants that make you blind (when you reach the perimeter)
- incidents that play to your profile, like a woman in distress, or alluring temptations
Or everyone could just be conditioned using a combination of drugs in the water and propoganda
Or a multiple combination of the above, for an outlandish level of layers.
The tone could be incredulous exasperation. Ridiculously unbelievable but real.
And for an extra layer, people start dying, and people that the hero trust tell him it is a game of survivalism, dog eat dog, Battle Royale.
The propaganda could be made fun, with “Let’s Make X Great Again” catch-phrases, and guilty pleasure pop songs front and centre.
The original storyline needs to go. It shouldn’t be about politics, but rather are you part of society or not. Think your own mind, or not. Throw in big aspects of The Truman Show. And Big Brother.
Other ideas:
- No cash. Everyone uses a card that is tracked
- Only one type of phone / phone service. Run by a mysterious mega-corporation
- When he escapes to the next town/suburb, it is the same situation all over again
- No time. No news. How goods arrive is a mystery
- Everyone has a service job. There is no manufacture
- People worship a sigil that defines everything that is good
- Children are unusually bright
- People disappear when they turn 60
Actually, do a Stranger Things. Liberally steal from The Truman Show, Wayward Pines, Big Brother and The Prisoner.
Cast Matt Damon as the lead. He has done spy, and stranger in a strange land more the once.