My first foray into something to follow up my adventures with James Bond led me into more British spy stuff. The Prisoner is a late sixties show that only lasted 17 episodes. But they’re some pretty tight, compact, and brainy entertainment for sure. Patrick McGoohan starred as Number 6, a secret agent that quit the British service, but since he knows too much, is placed in The Village, which is basically a prison run by forces undetermined.

I’m about halfway through the series, and it thrives on the unknown. We don’t know where The Village is, we don’t know much about Number 6’s past life, we don’t know the identity of Number 1 (the person or thing running the operation), and often nothing is as it seems until later in the episode. There are questions everywhere, from why Number 2 is different each episode (but always drinking milk), what’s up with the butler, why did Number 6 really resign, and what does the ending of the program mean? Largely, this is due to the show being told from Number 6’s point of view.

However, things get more complex (if you can imagine that) as the powers that be use increasingly strange and deliberately mind-bending techniques to get information out of Number 6 - double agents, drugs, brain washing, psychology, and even convincing him he’s an agent pretending to be himself (in The Schizoid Man).

On a larger level, the show becomes allegory - how far a person will go to retain their individuality in the face of forces that wish them to conform. It could be seen as a comment on society as a whole and the nature of freedom itself. For we all have secrets we don’t want to divulge, and in today’s society that is increasingly surveillance oriented (some say there is no such thing as privacy anymore), have we all already become “numbers” and don’t even know it, since by and large, most of us never try to escape the system?

But getting back to the show itself, I’m finding it really entertaining. It has that campy sixites feel. The world of The Village is as if Blofeld took over a city and forced James Bond to live in it. Patrick McGoohan is an appealing actor. Lastly, because of the short story arc, I’m confident this series won’t begin to feel like a waste of time with filler episodes - even if I don’t get many satisfying answers by the end (supposedly the final episode was so confusing that Patrick McGoohan had to leave the country to avoid being hounded by irate fans [???]).

Anyhow, I’m going to plow ahead and watch the whole show, and then do episode by episode breakdowns. Spoilers will abound, as I’m more interested in poking at the unanswerable questions this show raises.

Here are the opening credits which feature Number 6’s resignation and capture.

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Categories: Television, The Prisoner :: ::
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