Thoughts on the new Prisoner series

The Prisoner was ok, but I found it lacking in terms of the Village itself. In the original series the Village was a pivotal character and took on a life of its own. I can understand that by shrinking the series to 6 hours they have to not include a lot of ideas of the original series, but I think that not fleshing out the Village takes a lot from the show and the ideas that the first series try to focus on. In the first series there were elections, a ruling body, sports and all sorts of strange and odd things. In this new version it seems just a pale backdrop.

As for this idea for Number 2 I am not sure I like it. Number 2 never had family, if the current number 2 failed to convert 6, a new Number 2 was always brought in. The thing that made the original Prisoner series so great was the constant struggle between 6 and the CURRENT Number 2. If 2 failed, he would be ousted by Number 1 and replaced with a new Number 2. The 2's never wanted to fail and that was a great thing about the old show. How could 6 get the Number 2 removed and who would win that battle?

In the new version of the series, 2 has a family and is rather well planted in the Village. Also we have not heard 6 even question who "1" may be which is a little bit strange. Overall with the editing and odd cuts I really did not follow the second episode at all as it tried to be a little too "spooky and mysterious" it seemed to be confusing and not able to tie up lose ends.

So far I give the show  2 1/2 stars and I hope it integrates things a little better or it could end up being a let down. I understand that they do not want to simply recreate the old show but I do feel like they passed up a good chance to really shine by not updating the old classic but making it more streamlined which is the direction I would have gone with it.