Who Is Number Six?

Doubtless you've heard that there's a feature-film adaptation being developed of the cult television show The Prisoner. Who knows how you can take something so idiosyncratic and transform it into a new story that doesn't cling too tightly to the past, or fixate too much on the present? But I do feel pretty certain about one thing. I really, really want Kevin McKidd to play Number Six.

If you don't know him, he did a terrific job as the character Lucious Vorenus on the short-lived HBO series Rome. There's a certain degree of physical resemblance, but I think what makes McKidd so appropriate is that his role on Rome shares a powerful sense of righteousness with McGoohan's creation. Lucious is taken to a place in the story where he feels that he has nothing to lose or live for, and I think that brought him within a stone's throw of the distrustful, acerbic Number Six.

McGoohan was so extreme with the character that your alliance with him was not so much based on sympathy as it was a sense of agreement, a desire to share or believe in his certainty of right and wrong. McKidd's performance gives me confidence that he could bring more sympathy and emotion to the role, to give Number Six's strident qualities some warmth.

Maybe the film'll never happen, and I'm sure Universal and the filmmakers have plenty of ideas on who will don the black blazer. Still, I had to get this off my chest, just in case someone who has a say in things is reading... you just never know.

Be seeing you.