Cult 1960s series The Prisoner left generations of viewers scratching their heads in confusion.

But those willing to tackle the latest remake of the surreal spy-prisoner drama will be in for an extra treat according to one of its stars – everything is going to be explained.

The new series started in America on Sunday and will be coming to our own screens next year. It stars legendary Brit actor Sir Ian McKellen alongside American James Caviezel, who starred in the Passion of the Christ.

Sir Ian, best known in recent years for his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, plays the part of the fearsome captor Number Two, who keeps Number Six trapped on a tropical island – set in Wales, as in the original series.

But despite his apparent malevolence, Sir Ian insists his character is not “evil.”

“I don’t like to think of my characters as evil,” he says. “They may do evil things but are they evil inside? That’s what an actor has to think, he has to defend his character.”

The new £10 million series features six episodes, 11 shorter than its predecessor, and has been jointly produced by ITV and the American channel AMC.

It charts the story of a former secret agent who is kidnapped by an unknown enemy and taken to a mysterious village where inmates are numbered but not named.

While it failed to win the support of original star and co-writer of The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan, who died aged 80 in January, Sir Ian insists he is very proud of the new show.

“I sat absolutely vividly and I watched it all the way through, six hours without any adverts and my goodness you have to concentrate.

“Unlike the original series, at the end of this everything is explained, so what my character Number Two is doing keeping Number Six trapped in the village is all explained and everything is not what it seemed. I was very pleased, it was a great cast and made by an English company.”

The Lord of the Rings star was in the West Midlands visiting Perry Beeches School, Birmingham, to help promote his campaign to tackle bullying – just a few miles away from where he began his professional acting career.

After leaving Cambridge University in 1961, he joined the cast of Belgrade Theatre Company in Coventry, where he was paid the princely sum of £9 a week. Ian Murray McKellen was born in Burnley in 1939, but spent most of his childhood in Wigan. His father Denis, a civil engineer, was a lay preacher, as were both of his grandfathers. His mother Margery died when he was 12 years old.

He became fascinated by theatre at a young age; one of his favourite Christmas presents was a fold-away Victorian-style theatre.

His elder sister Jean took him to see Twelfth Night performed by Wigan Little Theatre, and he later saw Jean star in a Wigan High School for Girls’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Jean continued to be involved in amateur dramatics right up to her death.

“My acting began early and continued mostly at school,” he recalled in a 2006 interview.

“At Bolton School there were a number of lads who did as much acting as I did and, voracious theatre-goers, also went on the annual camp to Stratford-upon-Avon for the Shakespeare Festival.

“My best friends, David Hargreaves and Duncan Sculthorpe, and I were stage-struck and could alarm our peers by high-stepping routines across the playground. We all went to Cambridge, where Hargreaves ended up as Professor of Education. Sculthorpe wrote a classic study on aquatic plants.”

He joined Bolton Little Theatre, of which he is still patron, and while at Cambridge University he joined the famous Marlowe Society, appearing in Doctor Faustus and Henry IV alongside Derek Jacobi and Trevor Nunn.