By now I hope you're two-thirds of the way through AMC's new six-part miniseries, "The Prisoner," which launched on Sunday night and plowed through its third and fourth episodes on Monday. The series is about as good as sci-fi TV gets. Gone is the low-budget cheese of so many past cable series, and in its place are strong performances from talented actors, a twisty plot revealed slowly and expertly and a gorgeous overall look that is more Hollywood hit than small screen crud.
The first of last night's eps, "Anvil," delivers on all these fronts and contains one of the most intense scenes in the entire series (big spoilers ahead!). For the uninitiated — or those not familiar with the original British series on which this "Prisoner" is based — James Caviezel plays a man called Six, who finds himself stranded in the mysterious Village with no memory of how he got there. Attempting to make sure Six doesn't learn the truth about his environment is Two (Ian McKellen), who has a silently brooding son named 11-12, played by Jamie Campbell Bower ("New Moon").
Up until the pivotal "Anvil" scene, 11-12 has hovered almost wordlessly by his father, slowly beginning to question what he thinks he knows about the Village. Toward the end of the ep, we get to see why 11-12 was so secretive: he's having a love affair with a male secret agent and decides to murder him rather than let his father do him any harm. The scene is unexpected, bloody and powerful.
"It's a very high intensity scene emotionally and we spent a long period of time at that moment in the story," Bower told MTV News. "You have to be incredibly highly strung all day and it's no fun for anyone around you to be just moping about."
The "New Moon" star called the "Prisoner" murder scene "one of the most rewarding scenes I think I've ever done in my life," adding that "the whole show in general has challenged me, not only as an actor but also as a person — it helped me grow."
I won't jump any further ahead in the story, but that scene is impressive stuff on the part of Bower and suggests an actor with talents we've only just begun to see. I look forward to more from the young Brit. He clearly takes his craft seriously.
"I don't want to sound like a d---, like I was there being in the moment, but for a scene like that you do have to take yourself away," the actor explained. "There's no point in pissing about with all the guys that you can piss about with when you're meant to being doing a scene like that. So you do have to sort of take yourself away, go out back, do your thing and it gets very emotionally draining."
Have you been keeping up with "The Prisoner"? Do you know the original? How does this one measure up? How does it stand on its own?
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