The premise for this series is amazing. A secret agent is imprisoned in a mysterious village by captors who pressure him for information. Which makes it sad how wasted it was.
The series has a lot of good ideas like the episode where his captors invade #6's dreams and the one where a replica of him is created for the purpose of screwing with his mind. These episodes are great by themselves, and some of the others are pretty good too, but when you look at it as one story, it becomes dissatisfying. The first major issue is that there is no progression between episodes. There is a beginning and an end but in the rest of them the plot does not advance at all.
This would not be a problem in a series without an overarching plot, but in this one, I think it kills any tension. There are several episodes where it appears that #6 has escaped but, of course, he always ends up in the exact same place in the next episode. In some other episodes it appears that something has changed or is about to change, like in the one where #6 becomes the new #2, but of course this never lasts. This results in the viewer not being able to feel anything, because they know that no matter what happens, nothing is going to change.
The other major issue is the ending. The pilot episode introduces several driving questions such as "Who is #1?", "Who runs the village?", "Why did #6 resign?" and "Why do his captors want to know?" And the ending answers none of these, just giving us a mind screw that will make you wonder what drugs the writers were doing.
And if these questions are never answered then why introduce them in the first place? And what's more, then why am I even watching this? While I did kind of enjoy this series, the thought of how much more it could have been if the plot was a genuine mystery where each episode gave us clues and foreshadowing before finally revealing the answers instead of the plot going nowhere and answering nothing leaves me with a very mixed opinion of it.
The series has a lot of good ideas like the episode where his captors invade #6's dreams and the one where a replica of him is created for the purpose of screwing with his mind. These episodes are great by themselves, and some of the others are pretty good too, but when you look at it as one story, it becomes dissatisfying. The first major issue is that there is no progression between episodes. There is a beginning and an end but in the rest of them the plot does not advance at all.
This would not be a problem in a series without an overarching plot, but in this one, I think it kills any tension. There are several episodes where it appears that #6 has escaped but, of course, he always ends up in the exact same place in the next episode. In some other episodes it appears that something has changed or is about to change, like in the one where #6 becomes the new #2, but of course this never lasts. This results in the viewer not being able to feel anything, because they know that no matter what happens, nothing is going to change.
The other major issue is the ending. The pilot episode introduces several driving questions such as "Who is #1?", "Who runs the village?", "Why did #6 resign?" and "Why do his captors want to know?" And the ending answers none of these, just giving us a mind screw that will make you wonder what drugs the writers were doing.
And if these questions are never answered then why introduce them in the first place? And what's more, then why am I even watching this? While I did kind of enjoy this series, the thought of how much more it could have been if the plot was a genuine mystery where each episode gave us clues and foreshadowing before finally revealing the answers instead of the plot going nowhere and answering nothing leaves me with a very mixed opinion of it.