Interesting Television: The Prisoner (1967) and its remake (2009)--Part One

This was the opening dialouge to almost all episodes of "The Prisoner":

 "Where am I?"

"In the Village."

"What do you want?"

"Information."

"Whose side are you on?"

"That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"

"You won't get it."

"By hook or by crook, we will."

"Who are you?"

"The new Number Two."

"Who is Number One?"

"You are Number Six."

"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

"The Prisoner" is a unique piece of television. It addresses issues such as personal identity and freedom, democracy, education, scientific progress, art and technology, while still remaining an entertaining drama series. Over seventeen episodes we witness a war of attrition between the faceless forces behind 'The Village' (a Kafkaesque community somewhere between Butlins and Alcatraz) and its most strong willed inmate, No. 6. who struggles ceaselessly to assert his individuality while plotting to escape from his captors."--Stuart Besick, from "The Prisoner" International Movie Database Website.   

I first saw "The Prisoner" as a CBS Summer Replacment show in  1969.  I was still a kid, but had seen my share of  American  spy dramas on telelvision ("The Man From Uncle", "Mission:Impossible") and spoofs of the James Bond craze ("Get Smart").  I had even seen some of "The Avengers" which was a hybrid of both the dramatic and the tongue-in-cheek espionage series.

But none of that prepared me for this show.    Even after I had watched several episodes  of it, I wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing.    In 1978 I got reaquainted with the series in a syndication run.  This time the series, starring Patrick McGoohan, the star of "Danger Man" (or "Secret Agent Man" in the USA) had me hooked by its enigmatic qualities.  The oppressive and eclectic athmosphere of "The Village" and its allegorical views of what constitutes freedom and individual integrity had resonance now that I knew something about George Orwell's and Franz Kafka's most popular writings.  But I still couldn't get a handle on what point on the politcal spectrum the show fell on.  And the last episode of the show "Fall Out", where "Number 6/The Prisoner" (McGoohan) finally gets to meet the "Big Brother/Number One" seems to be the most perplexing  ending to any work of drama I'd seen to that date.   

  And apparently I wasn't alone. Millions of adults had seen the series in the United Kingdom when itoriginally aired in 1967/1968 and didn't know quite what to make of it either. The American host of the station that presented the series claimed that McGoohan himself had felt the need to to leave England and for Switzerland and then America because so many people were angred by the enigmatic ending to the show.

This intrigued me.  Television dramas could be interesting of course but casual viewers usually don't get so worked up over a show that the star and co-creator has to hot- foot himself and his family out of the country to avoid people who were in an uproar over what was only a James Bond genre show, right?  Didn't make sense. It's onlly after seeing a couple episodes that you see that McGoohan and producers George Markstein and David Tomblin were subverting the whole "cold war spy" series into something that was neither stoic action-drama or smug spoofery.

(Exteriors for "The Prisoner" were shot along the coast of north Wales, at the resort of Portmierion. This was the backdrop for "The Village.)   

After the show had aired a few more times in the 1970's and 80's it took on a cult status, a status which apparently was only increased by the Internet, from which several "The Prisoner" sites can be found with a quick Google search. That cult status has not escaped the notice of movie and television executives either--a new "Prisoner" television series is currently in production in Namibia and Capetown, South Africa, to be broadcast next year on the AMC network.  Here's a link below for information on the new series.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner/    

The premise of the original series is deceptively simple.  A man who works for some British intelligence service marches into the office of his boss in the bowels of the Parliament Building, slams down a written resignation and then takes off in his sportscar to pack for a trip to the tropics.  But he finds himself waylaid to a place called "The Vilage", an idyllic little seaport where people are generally friendly but from which no person can leave. Every one has a number they wear on a badge on their person at all times.   

(above, McGoohan's character campaigns for the office of "Number Two" in the episode "Free For All".  In "The Village" elections are held from time to time. If he manages to win, freedom will be won and things will certainly change for the citizenry. Or will they?)     

 

Almost every week "Number 6" had to deal with a new leader of the village , an administrator known only as "Number 2", usually a man but in one episode a woman.   The new "boss" would try to get him to break down and acknowledge why he resigned from the service and/or entice him to join "The Village" as a proper good citizen.  Rather than simply eliminating him, or subjecting him to brute torture, the forces behind these various Number 2s had a mission to win him over as a potential new "boss" of the Village.  Number Six is no ordinary agent, one must surmise, but has great value.  (I later learned the basic premise of the show bears some resemblance to the philosophy of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, a philosophy of extreme selfishness I cannot say I am impressed with any more than I am with the notion of mass conformity in peace-time civilization.)        

Here is a scene from one of my favorite episodes, "Hammer And Anvil", which shows a quintessential encounter between Number 6 and the authorities. Number Two is played by the fine actor Patrick Cargill.  His character has just driven Number 73, a fragile woman prisoner, to suicide.  He now works his "charms" on our hero.  

 

In the next section of the blog, I will post a few more "Prisoner" clips and talk about why I think this is one series that is worth looking out for, even if you've never seen it.  The best aspects of the show have a unique way of being thoughtful and entertaining. 

Until then, here's a bit of a taste of the previous series McGoohan starred in,'Danger Man".  It  made him a big star on the small screen and the highest paid actor in British television.  It also reportedly bored him after awhile, but  its success in the UK and North America gave him the clout to  get something as off-the-wall as "The Prisoner" off the ground.