Well that was fast. Sunday night, AMC’s The Prisoner averaged 2.2 million viewers in its premiere, but on Monday night the second two hour installment averaged less than a million viewers.
Categorized | TV Ratings
Down goes AMC’s The Prisoner in second outing
Posted on 18 November 2009 by Robert Seidman
30 Responses to “Down goes AMC’s The Prisoner in second outing”
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That’s pretty much what I expected. People that tuned in for the first 2 parts went “wtf?” and stopped watching.
Ouch! although MNF may have played a part too. It might increase for the final part but not by much.
I liked it. But it was way too confusing for a casual tv viewer.
Sorry gang….but I thought it was complete ass! Bad TV at its worst…
947,000 for Tuesday’s finale (the number above is for the 2nd part on Monday night, Tuesday’s numbers in the link below):
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/11/18/sons-of-anarchy-beats-the-forgotten-and-ties-the-jay-leno-show-with-adults-18-49/34020
I loved it. But, expected a lot to tune out to ‘David Lynch-esque’ storytelling.
It was surprisingly worth the effort for people who like brain-teasers w/ a message.
Also, a bit confused….what was Monday’s rating?
I have Sunday: 2.2m
Monday:_____
Tuesday: .947m
It would make most sense to me if a ton of people tuned out after Monday’s episode. It did become overtly abstract hinting at the potential ending wouldn’t make sense or be satisfactory. Fortunately, not the case.
Ive only finished the first 2 hour episode and am in love with it. Definitely not a big ratings draw due to the “WTF” aspect of the show but it has me hooked. Ive already put in an order for the original series on Blu Ray to see how great it is as well.
I watched the Prisoner Sunday nite and taped the other two nights
but my viewing will not show up in ratings. I agree with preair way too confusing for a casual tv viewer.
I loved it once I got into it and am looking forward to watching
Tuesday’s show.
I have Sunday: 2.2m
Monday: .948m
Tuesday: .947m
To my question above….i think I found it. Nevermind.
I really tried to watch. I kept hearing Gandalf, and trying to figure out why he was not in a white robe. It was hard to follow, and some of the dialog was so confusing. I do not fault the actors at all! They did exceptionally well. But the script and story was enough for me to find something else to watch.
Count me in the group that watched the first two hours and went “wft?”
Kimmy,
I loved it but could see where it would definitely lose people if the mystery of what was going on wasn’t worth sticking around for.
It was really strange seeing Gandalf give cherry cake to Hawkins from Jericho and wonder why that giant white ball kept chasing Jesus.
Bummer! I didn’t know that the second part was the next day! I thought it was going to be a weekly thing. I have the first part on my DVR, but haven’t watched it yet. Does AMC repeat stuff like Bravo does?
This was poor scheduling, really. Asking audiences to completely abandon their viewing habits for a somewhat out there mini-series three days in a row was really pushing it.
I have it on the DVR but something tells me it’s just going to sit on there for a while. Someone convince me it’s worth watching!
Well, 7-3-3 and I were talking on the way to 4-1-7’s house and we think we’ve worked it out: It sucked.
Sorry, guys- it’s an old concept, filmed with new cameras. That doesn’t work.
Ya know what DOES work? Taking an old concept, re-thinking it completely, and switching out the MAKE Starbuck, with a FEMALE Starbuck, making people wonder how that’s gonna work.
BSG was good, because it was GOOD. Effort was expended to re-tell the tale a new way. And then to have it pre-released to America from Britain…that made for quite an opening!
Like I suggested: some things need to stay in our memories, not our schedules. DON’T bring back Gilligan’s Island!
Yeah, i kinda like the first episode, but after that, i yawned 3 times. It’s so boring…
I actually really enjoyed the first two hours on Sunday. Granted, it was weird but very intriguing and actually pretty easy to follow which, after reading reviews saying otherwise, had me scratching my head. And then Monday came and it became such a bizarre mess, I didn’t even bother last night. Apparently I was in a very, very tiny minority though because it held on to almost everybody from Monday to Tuesday.
Brian Fahrlander says:
“Sorry, guys- it’s an old concept, filmed with new cameras. That doesn’t work.”
No need to apologize, champ, particularly given that the “old concept” of the original series was almost entirely discarded in favor of the even older concept of Swedenborgianism (which one might defensibly guess to be salable in an age that includes paying “neo-pagans”). So it goes.
“Too confusing”? Well, count me in with the few who DON’T like the way most tv shows spoon-feed us the plot, morals, etc…. This show was beautiful.
The lead character is bland. McKellen is good, but the complete lack of motivations behind the characters is killing the show. In the original, you knew immediately what the characters were about and what the conflict was – spy vs brainwashers. The entire issue in the original was how would the conflict play out. In this show, you have no idea who the characters are, what their motivations and background are, and no idea how it might play out. It’s TOO vague.
The original was surreal, this is TOO surreal. The original show was confusing only in terms of HOW Six was being screwed over in each episode. That was always cleared up by the end of the episode, and Six would either beat the current brainwashing gambit or lose (and remain in The Village if an escape attempt was made). The only truly surreal episodes were near the end of the series, especially the finale.
Definitely not as good as the original.
count me in w/the loving it crowd, and i totally expected to hate it. took a while to hook me, but i’m intrigued (seen 4 eps, dvr’d the last 2).
not as good as the original but i’m digging it.
Growing up I loved Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man/Secret Agent Man (Plus I loved the Johnny Rivers Theme Song). Also spent some time a few years back trying to track down the original prisoner series.
This was confusing show. My wife watched about and hour and said that was enough torture for her. I went to bed after 90 minutes. Makes me wonder if this was test screened.
Too bad as I had been looking forward to it. I still have it on the MythTV computer so maybe I will watch it one day.
JVO hit it on the head. It was bizarre scheduling putting it on three nights in a row, then airing it over and over and over again on those three nights (each episode aired three or four times in a 24 hour period). Seems as if stringing it out would have produced better ratings, especially if they aired it every Sunday, when there are more viewers, or on Wed, when there is less competition. Airing it on Monday was suicide.
They really cut their own feet off there.
As for the show, I didn’t love it, but I sure as hell appreciated it. It was great to see a network doing something completely different, even if some of it seemed to be different for different’s sake. With all the really generic movie retreads that most nets air these days, it was a refreshing, if somewhat confusing, breath of air.
I will be interested to see the DVR numbers, and even more interested to see what the aggregate numbers are for all the multiple airings.
Will that info be available, guys?
For several days (a week? weeks?) prior to “The Prisoner,” AMC kept a constant ad for the program on the lower left corner of the screen. It didn’t matter if the movie was an action flick, a Western, romantic comedy, whatever, in that corner of the screen you saw the ad. Occasionally it was replaced, briefly, by some larger image, sometimes a moving image, also advertising “The Prisoner.” The only time the ad came down was during commercials.
Networks do this all the time, of course, but to me it’s an enormous distraction and an insult both to the viewer and to the movie you’re watching. It means, in effect, that you’re watching (in whole or part) a commercial 100% of the time. Think about it.
I’ve rewarded AMC by taking their channel off of my remote. Who needs it. Adios, AMC!
On top of that, Larry, they kept that damn graphic up most of the time the actual show was airing.
Hey, here is an ad for the show you are watching right now!!!!
Of course, the clutter on the screen on all nets is doing nothing but increasing, almost exponentially, all over the dial. Blame it on the DVR, I guess, but if my wife is anything like the typical DVR user, most of them must see most commercials anyway. The lowest speed of FF, which is what she uses, allows for all commercials to be recognized, albeit without sound.
I wonder if that will every be broken out of the data? Can they measure at what FF speed people are skipping commercials? After all, commercials at that speed have the same impact any commercial has me, which is to say not much at all, save for making me occasionally aware of something I have never heard of before (usually another show).
Glad to see some numbers for The Prisoner, though they were pretty puny. I enjoyed the show and actually watched four hours of it straight on Tuesday night (I watch Heroes & Trauma live.). If you can stick it out, the last hour moves quickly and the ending is a real punch in the gut. I didn’t see it coming at all.
SGA
Well I went WTF but still watch. This is a thinking man program so I was expecting low ratings. Not surprise at all it got low ratings.
One of the best remakes I have seen for a long while.
I honestly think that had this show not been called Prisoner and allowed to find its own audience it would have done better. As it was, the over hype attached many fans of the old show who found that the new show had gutted the spirit of the old show like a trout and had left only outside tokens – the village, the numbers and rover (none of which were important to the new show at all). And of course lot of those fans just tuned out.
This “Prisoner” was a mess, even taken on its own terms and not comparing it to the original series. I don’t mind complex or even confusing programs, and I like surreal stuff, but the final hour wasn’t consistent with Two’s hostility towards Six in the first four hours. Why try to break Six, hurt him, spy on him, etc.?
The first two hours had their moments but it got worse and worse as it went along.
Among other things, in the end (spoiler alert! if you haven’t seen all six hours yet), we needed to know more details of the mechanics of the Village and how it supplanted the “real” world for its inhabitants. Did any of them, in the outside world, agree to go into the Village? Wouldn’t it have made more sense if all the residents were seriously mentally impaired in the outside world, like the real 313? People who are merely miserable in their real lives shouldn’t be taken to the Village — that’s not going to help. Is it? Somebody should’ve asked this question.
Also, why did Two need to control/suppress dreamers like Six in the first place? Why did people need to forget about the outside world and other places? Was it so that they wouldn’t suspect that they had other, much more troubled lives in the outside world, and wouldn’t begin to remember all of their real selves?
At the end, why didn’t Six question Two’s totalitarian style of governing? Six should’ve clearly been trying to come up with a democratic style of Village at the end. That was left vague.
This had potential. It’s not a bad concept but the dialogue and characterizations were a mess and completely derailed it along with all these other problems.
R.S. Hack makes a lot of good points above too.
On the shallow end, one of the few good things about this show was that Hayley Atwell (Lucy) was smoking hot. Yowza!