Entertainment

Wrong ‘number’

Don’t go to The Village. And I mean that sincerely.

If you are one of the tens of fans of the 1960s Brit cult series “The Prisoner,” may I suggest you particularly stay away from AMC’s excruciatingly long (six hours over three nights) remake.

Like the old series, there’s this guy named Number Six (Jim Caviezel), who seems to remember that he used to be more than just a number. Or maybe he doesn’t really remember — unfortunately, I can’t remember either because my brain shut down around the third hour.

As luck would have it, after running for his life for some unknown reason, Number Six is picked up by a cab driver, Number 147 (Lennie James), who says he can’t take him out of “The Village” because there is no other place to go. Luckily in real life, you can go someplace else by just clicking the remote!

We quickly learn that “The Village” is ruled by Number Two (Ian McKellen), who dresses like a Banana Republic version of Tom Wolfe. Number Two has a wife (Rachael Blake) — who he keeps in a comatose state by popping pills into her mouth (why he doesn’t use a liquid form of meds I can’t say) — and a gay son, Number 11-12 (Jamie Campbell Bower), who suffers for his indiscretions. Well, he doesn’t suffer himself, but he is forced to garrote his older (hot) lover (Vincent Regan), who does the suffering for both of them.

The two women who might love Number Six (in numerical order) are Dr. 4-15 (Hayley Atwell) and Number 313 (Ruth Wilson), but we don’t know if they really love him since no one can remember anything. Other more mysterious problems, for me anyway, are why the town has super-modern computers but old TVs with rabbit ears and radios that only play old Beach Boys tunes — and why they are only allowed to eat wraps.

Anyway, the wrap-only town consists only of tiny tent-shaped pink row houses (except for Number Two’s grand casa), all surrounded by sand dunes, stretches of flat sand and even sinkholes of sand.

Occasionally, when Number Two’s comatose wife wakes up, people fall into these sinkholes, which is unfortunate, so she has to stay asleep or the whole damned town would disappear. Or so you’d think. But when her son does wake her up in the sixth hour, instead of losing people to sinkholes, residents start duplicating. Great — just what we need –more bores!

Like the ill-fated series “Carnivale,” there is much cello music to let us know that this is seri ously-mysterious, and like that series, it goes nowhere slowly.

The real-life Village locale (in Nambia) is fascinating and McKellen is great, as always — but Caviezel and the rest just grimace a lot and make you want to get-the-hell outta town.