The Cold War years of the 1960s were the "golden age" of James Bond and the espionage genre. On TV, there was "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "Mission: Impossible," even "Get Smart" and some other shows best forgotten, such as "Mr. Terrific" and "Captain Nice." I first saw Patrick McGoohan when he played the dour, grim spy John Drake in "Secret Agent," a slightly modified version of "Danger Man" from Lew Grade's ITC. Sometime in the late 1960s, we saw McGoohan again---even grimmer and more dour, if possible---in a bizarre British "spy" series: "The Prisoner," also from ITC.
We Americans didn't see the same show the Brits saw. In those days, a typical season ran 13 weeks. "The Prisoner" was 18 hours long (16 hour-long episodes and a final 2-parter). A run of "The Prisoner" would always omit several episodes. Neither did we see complete shows, because each episode's running time was longer than U.S. shows owing to shorter and less frequent commercial breaks in the UK, so the episodes that did air were trimmed. The entire series was broadcast in later years, most notably on commercial-free PBS stations in the early 1980s. Even then, we didn't see quite the same show: The British PAL broadcasting system, with its higher number of lines, has a sharper picture and cleaner colors than the U.S.'s NTSC system. With the advent of all-digital and high-def TV, this difference may disappear. But what about the show itself?
The plot: A high-ranking British secret agent, whose name is never revealed, barges into the agency offices. He is indignant. There is no audio, but he appears to be telling his superior why he is fed up or outraged before he slams a letter of resignation down on the desk. But no, he hasn't said why. He goes home and packs for a trip, presumably to get away from it all. However, he knows too much for his own good, and mysterious forces are at work: While packing, he is knocked out by gas. When he awakens, he finds himself a resident on an island inhabited by others like himself: They possess information that makes them too risky to allow to return to a normal life. What looks like a beautiful resort is actually an elaborate, Kafkaesque prison called simply "The Village." The inmates do not have names, only Numbers. The protagonist is Number 6. (We never meet Numbers 3, 4 or 5. I speculated that future Number 2s are brought in at Number 5 and advance to 4, 3 and then 2 as each successive Number 2 bites the dust from week to week.) Escape is nearly impossible. The administrator of The Village is Number 2. (The identity of Number 1 is revealed---after a fashion---only near the end of the final episode.) In every episode, Number 2 devises an intricate scheme to induce Number 6 to reveal why he resigned, and in every episode, he or she fails and is replaced with a new Number 2. Number 6 is The Village's most strong-willed, stiff-necked, recalcitrant inmate, foiling every episode's plot to get him to submit, outwitting his captors in every way except one: His every attempt at escape ultimately fails. Every episode's opening credits end with The Prisoner shouting defiantly at his warders: "I am not a number! I am a free man!"
This, of course, is the theme of the show. The Prisoner's reason for resigning, with which his captors are obsessed, is merely the "gimmick," or what Hitchcock liked to call The MacGuffin, i.e., a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. Like the world of George Orwell's "1984," The Village was a vehicle for McGoohan's musings on the modern conflict between totalitarianism, soulless conformity and regimentation on one side and personal identity, freedom, democracy, and the uses of education, science, art and technology on the other. McGoohan succeeded in creating a watchable imaginary world, with Orwellian dialogue and a visual style slightly reminiscent of early Fellini, at the same time as the plots and plot devices were often sublimely silly verging on nonsensical. The main piece of silliness is that never once does The Prisoner say his own name. Nor does anyone else! There is even one episode where he manages to escape back to London (before being tricked back onto the island), and the script contortions that ensue so that none of the other character says his name either are truly ridiculous. In the 2-part final episode, Number 6's captors acknowledge that he has maintained his individuality despite all their attempts to wrest it from him, and grant him what he has sought from the beginning: To find out who is the true master of The Village; to meet Number 1. This episode abandons all pretense at realism and becomes an often nightmarish roller-coaster ride through a succession of images that leave the viewer wondering just what in the world is going on. In the end, "The Prisoner" lets the viewer down. McGoohan seems to have run out of ideas and could not figure out a way to end the series convincingly, so he resorted to surrealistic silliness and hoped that everyone would be so dazzled by it that they wouldn't turn off the TV at the end thinking, "Makes no sense at all."
Now that "The Prisoner" is available on DVD, I would recommend that if you're interested, you should watch it once just to see what all the fuss is about.
We Americans didn't see the same show the Brits saw. In those days, a typical season ran 13 weeks. "The Prisoner" was 18 hours long (16 hour-long episodes and a final 2-parter). A run of "The Prisoner" would always omit several episodes. Neither did we see complete shows, because each episode's running time was longer than U.S. shows owing to shorter and less frequent commercial breaks in the UK, so the episodes that did air were trimmed. The entire series was broadcast in later years, most notably on commercial-free PBS stations in the early 1980s. Even then, we didn't see quite the same show: The British PAL broadcasting system, with its higher number of lines, has a sharper picture and cleaner colors than the U.S.'s NTSC system. With the advent of all-digital and high-def TV, this difference may disappear. But what about the show itself?
The plot: A high-ranking British secret agent, whose name is never revealed, barges into the agency offices. He is indignant. There is no audio, but he appears to be telling his superior why he is fed up or outraged before he slams a letter of resignation down on the desk. But no, he hasn't said why. He goes home and packs for a trip, presumably to get away from it all. However, he knows too much for his own good, and mysterious forces are at work: While packing, he is knocked out by gas. When he awakens, he finds himself a resident on an island inhabited by others like himself: They possess information that makes them too risky to allow to return to a normal life. What looks like a beautiful resort is actually an elaborate, Kafkaesque prison called simply "The Village." The inmates do not have names, only Numbers. The protagonist is Number 6. (We never meet Numbers 3, 4 or 5. I speculated that future Number 2s are brought in at Number 5 and advance to 4, 3 and then 2 as each successive Number 2 bites the dust from week to week.) Escape is nearly impossible. The administrator of The Village is Number 2. (The identity of Number 1 is revealed---after a fashion---only near the end of the final episode.) In every episode, Number 2 devises an intricate scheme to induce Number 6 to reveal why he resigned, and in every episode, he or she fails and is replaced with a new Number 2. Number 6 is The Village's most strong-willed, stiff-necked, recalcitrant inmate, foiling every episode's plot to get him to submit, outwitting his captors in every way except one: His every attempt at escape ultimately fails. Every episode's opening credits end with The Prisoner shouting defiantly at his warders: "I am not a number! I am a free man!"
This, of course, is the theme of the show. The Prisoner's reason for resigning, with which his captors are obsessed, is merely the "gimmick," or what Hitchcock liked to call The MacGuffin, i.e., a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. Like the world of George Orwell's "1984," The Village was a vehicle for McGoohan's musings on the modern conflict between totalitarianism, soulless conformity and regimentation on one side and personal identity, freedom, democracy, and the uses of education, science, art and technology on the other. McGoohan succeeded in creating a watchable imaginary world, with Orwellian dialogue and a visual style slightly reminiscent of early Fellini, at the same time as the plots and plot devices were often sublimely silly verging on nonsensical. The main piece of silliness is that never once does The Prisoner say his own name. Nor does anyone else! There is even one episode where he manages to escape back to London (before being tricked back onto the island), and the script contortions that ensue so that none of the other character says his name either are truly ridiculous. In the 2-part final episode, Number 6's captors acknowledge that he has maintained his individuality despite all their attempts to wrest it from him, and grant him what he has sought from the beginning: To find out who is the true master of The Village; to meet Number 1. This episode abandons all pretense at realism and becomes an often nightmarish roller-coaster ride through a succession of images that leave the viewer wondering just what in the world is going on. In the end, "The Prisoner" lets the viewer down. McGoohan seems to have run out of ideas and could not figure out a way to end the series convincingly, so he resorted to surrealistic silliness and hoped that everyone would be so dazzled by it that they wouldn't turn off the TV at the end thinking, "Makes no sense at all."
Now that "The Prisoner" is available on DVD, I would recommend that if you're interested, you should watch it once just to see what all the fuss is about.