TVSquad

In every episode of The Prisoner, the heroic Number SIx would shout, "I am not a number. I am a free man!" Thanks to AMC's booth promoting the new updated Prisoner, everyone at Comic-Con can be a number.

Convention visitors can visit AMC's costumed staffers to obtain their own fictional identity and join the world of The Prisoner.

Fans become official residents of The Village (the show's mysterious city) and receive a photo ID badge identifying them by number only.

He is not a number. He is a free man -- and he's coming to Comic-Con.

The stars of AMC's mini-series remake of The Prisoner are headed to San Diego's mega-convention. The new Number Six, Jim Caviezel, will join Jamie Campbell-Bower (The Twilight Saga: New Moon) and Lennie James (Jericho) for a panel and preview of the six-part series.

The Prisoner tells the story of a retired spy who finds himself abducted and spirited away to a mysterious Village where nameless authority figures struggle to break his mind and spirit while he battles to escape. The show is known for its moral and existential themes as much as its sharp writing and distinctive art design.

Actually, two pieces of big news.

First, everyone has been wondering when season three of the AMC show would start. A lot of people have been speculating late summer, and then the network said it would be August, but now we have a definite date. The third season will bow on Sunday, August 16 at 10PM.

This preview doesn't show any new scenes from the upcoming third season of Mad Men, but it does give a nice quick summary of various things that happened in the second season and what the show is going to address when it comes back in August, and will get you excited for the new episodes. There's no official start date for the show other than just "August," though some have speculated it will be Sunday, August 16.

Breaking Bad, like Fringe, is one of those shows that I started to watch and really liked, but then drifted away from for one reason or another. I think this summer might be the time to get the DVDs and catch up. Here's a sneak peek of this Sunday's new episode, "Better Call Saul."

So it's Monday afternoon and you're just in the mood to watch a movie where viking women battle big sea monsters or one where a girl gets involved with the men who race souped-sports cars (and one that doesn't have "fast" or "furious" in the title). What are you to do?

Well, AMC has come to the rescue! Besides putting great original shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad on TV, AMC's web site is now streaming old B sci-fi, monster, biker, western, horror, comedy, and crime flicks.

I'm not sure why anyone, at this point, hasn't seen the first episode of AMC's Mad Men yet (anyone who wants to see it, that is). The entire first season is up on iTunes, AMC reran the show after the first run, and the DVDs have been out for a couple of weeks now, so there have been a lot of different ways for newbies and fans alike to get caught up on the show if they're interested enough. And now there's another way: AMC has made the first episode available for free on its site.

If you become hooked on the show after watching this first episode (of course you will!), check out AMC on July 20. They're going to have a marathon of the entire first season starting at noon. The second season starts the following Sunday, July 27, on it's new night, Sunday at 10pm.

(After you watch chapter 1 after the jump, click here for chapters 2 and 3.)

There's a fantastic story in yesterday's New York Times Magazine about AMC's Mad Men. It's actually the cover story (you don't see many cover stories in the NYT Mag about a TV show) and is one of the best articles I've read about a TV show in a very long time.

Besides interviewing creator/producer/writer Matthew Weiner at length, writer Alex Witchel also sits in on auditioning sessions and script meetings for the second season, interviews advertising icons (George Lois, Jerry Della Femina, William Bernbach) about the show, and gets choice quotes from cast members such as Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Elisabeth Moss, and January Jones. It's a beautifully written piece, really getting behind the scenes of the show, and includes this great paragraph to explain the show quite nicely.

American Movie Classics is really getting into original scripted programming, eh?

First the network brought us Mad Men and Breaking Bad, two of the most critically-acclaimed shows from last year, and now it has been announced that AMC has two more dramas in the works. The first one is Carter Beats The Devil, about a mysterious magician in the 1920s, and the other show is Ice, which is about the inside goings-on at a family owned diamond company in New York City.

I have no idea what Ice could be like (though with AMC's track record I'll definitely be watching), but I am familiar with Carter Beats The Devil. The show is based on a really intriguing novel from Glen David Gold, and Gold is going to work on the show as a consultant, so hopefully the series will have the same color and intelligence and mystery that the book had.

AMC has announced that the critically-acclaimed drama Mad Men will return for a second season on July 27, in its new Sunday at 10pm time slot. This moves it away from another hit cable show, Burn Notice, which is staying in its Thursday at 10 time slot, but puts it up against Lifetime's Army Wives (and, for the record, network shows like ABC's Brothers & Sisters)

I don't really see this as a bad thing. People record and watch shows at all different times now, and besides, a lot of hip cable shows have been successful on Sunday nights (The Sopranos, Deadwood, etc). AMC will also have a marathon of the first season's 13 episodes on July 20.

In other news, a soundtrack from the show will be released on June 22, and the first season DVDs will be in stores on July 1.

What do you think of the move?

[via TV Tattle]

It's interesting how some shows that come out on DVD are really bare affairs, with basic packaging and little or no extras. That's why it's great to see that the people behind the new Mad Men DVD (out July 1) have gone all out.

That's the DVD on the right, made to look like an old-fashioned cigarette lighter (if you haven't seen the show, it's set in 1960 and just about everyone smokes). You don't see many DVD packages, or any other packages for that matter, that actually celebrate the pastime of smoking (except, um, cigarette packages). But this one is even better than I could have ever imagined. It looks like a lighter when closed and it also opens like a lighter opens.

And did I mention there are a ton of extras?

AMC already has one critically acclaimed and Golden Globe nominated drama under its belt with the brilliant Mad Men. A second new series, Breaking Bad, hopes to follow that success, beginning in January. Malcolm in the Middle's Bryan Cranston stars as a high school chemistry teacher who turns to a life of crime in order to support his family after he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. If it's half as good as Mad Men it'll be twice as good as most of what's on TV.

But not content to wait around to see how Breaking Bad does critically and commercially, Variety reports that AMC has no less than four more shows in various stages of development, including two westerns. Westerns haven't been able to find success on the broadcast networks in years. Now by "Western" I'm talking the John Wayne/Clint Eastwood brand of Westerns with gunfights and saloon whores, not the likes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, which did find an audience but was a very different kind of show.

(S01E13) "Who knows why people do what they do?" - Don

True story: About 20 years ago, I worked with a woman who was overweight. She wasn't feeling well one day - I think she had an upset stomach - so she left work and went to the doctor. She found out that she was 8 months pregnant. Not a month or two months, but about a month before the baby was due.

I thought of that tonight after watching the season finale of Mad Men. So many things answered and so many doors left open for a second season...

Notice I didn't put an exact date for when Monsterfest starts in the title. I'm not quite sure when it starts. The American Movie Classics site doesn't have an exact start date. If you click on Monsterfest Schedule it goes to October 21, and the first couple of movies are The Birds and Psycho, but then there are a few war movies and dramas, so I'm not sure if this is the "official" start of the Monsterfest but I'll take their own link as gospel.

(S01E12) "Fire him if you want. But I'd keep an eye on him. You never know how loyalty is born." Cooper, to Don, about Pete.

I don't think I'm giving anything away when I tell you that at the end of this episode, Kennedy wins. But it's not really about that anyway, despite the title. The first half of the ep is all about the election and the different pairings we see at the Sterling Cooper all night party - Harry and Hildy, Ken and a secretary, even Sal and Joan, though not in the way you might think - but the second half finally explains what the deep, dark secret is in the past of Don Draper.

And the secret is...