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If a top-level spy decided he didn't want to be a spy anymore, could he just walk into HQ and hand in his resignation? With all that classified knowledge in his head, would they let him become a civilian again? The answer, according to the 1960s British TV series The Prisoner, is no. In fact, instead of receiving a gold watch for his years of faithful service, our hero (played by Patrick McGoohan) is followed home and knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he finds himself in a picturesque village where everyone is known by number. But where is it? Why was he brought here? And, most important, how does he leave?
As we learn in "Arrival," Number 6 can't leave. The Village's "citizens" might dress colorfully and stroll around its manicured gardens while a band plays bouncy Strauss marches, but the place is actually a prison. Surveillance is near total, and if all else fails, there's always the large, mysterious white ball that subdues potential escapees by temporarily smothering them. Who runs the Village? An ever-changing Number 2, who wants to know why Number 6 resigned. If he'd only cooperate, he's told, life can be made very pleasant. "I've resigned," he fumes. "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own." So sets the stage for the ultimate battle of wills: Number 6's struggle to retain his privacy, sanity, and individuality against the array of psychological and physical methods the Village uses to break him.
"Free for All" sees the Village gripped with campaign fever (it's a "democracy," Number 6 is told, though he retains a healthy skepticism). He's encouraged to run for the job of Number 2 against the incumbent, but what's the point? And why is the Village so keen to have a defiant troublemaker like Number 6 take the reins of power? In "Dance of the Dead," Number 2 stages an elaborate costume ball that turns into a nightmarish courtroom scene--and guess who's on trial?
An allegory of the conflict between person and society, individuality and conformity, and freedom and slavery, The Prisoner asks more questions than it answers, and that can be a maddening experience for viewers who like their TV neat and tidy. McGoohan (Braveheart, Escape from Alcatraz) also created, wrote, and directed much of the show, yet it's his screen presence that sets its tone. His terse body language, sardonic half-smile, and simmering anger at his imprisonment are used to maximum effect in scripts that emphasize strict word economy and witty repartee.
So does he ever escape? And does he ever find out who Number 1 is? "Questions are a burden to others," the Village saying goes. "Answers, a prison for oneself." Besides, only 14 more episodes until all is revealed. Or is it? --Steve Landau
Amazon.com video review:
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 2. Who is Number 1? You are Number 6. I am not a number, I am a free man!
The groundbreaking 1960s TV series The Prisoner continues with four more episodes of Number 6's struggle to escape the bizarre, picturesque confines of the Village. In "The Chimes of Big Ben," a Village art competition provides the perfect smokescreen for Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan) to hatch a daring escape plan with the help of another new arrival in the Village. Can she be trusted? In a brilliant and memorable performance, Leo McKern invests a humanity--alternately menacing, jolly, and paternal--to the role of Number 2, a quality lacking in many of his successors.
Colin Gordon plays Number 2 as a slightly insecure authoritarian in "A, B, and C," which concerns an attempt to break into and manipulate Number 6's dreams in order to discover why he resigned. Was he indeed "selling out" to the other side? Lively dialogue and a satisfying conclusion bail out what's otherwise a rather far-fetched episode. Gordon returns to the role in "The General," another one that's no slouch in the strained-credulity department: Can an entire university-level history course be delivered to people, via hypnotic TV, in 15 seconds? That's what the Village is experimenting with, but Number 6 smells a rat when he realizes that everyone seems to be reciting the same chunks of history--verbatim. It's a Twilight Zone-esque warning about the dangers of automated mass education, but it falls a bit flat in the end.
"Checkmate" fares much better, exploring the psychology of imprisonment and the difficulty Number 6 has figuring out who among his fellow Villagers works for his captors, and who against. One of the most visually stunning episodes, it opens with a magnificently staged chess match on the Village green, with humans as the pieces, "moved" by two Villagers using megaphones. And Number 6? A pawn, naturally. --Steve Landau
Amazon.com video review:
Perhaps no other series so confounded its loyal viewers as The
Prisoner. Why did Patrick McGoohan's British agent resign? Where was the
Village? And who, really, was Number 1? The Prisoner ends with its key riddles unanswered. It goes without saying that no Prisoner collection is complete without these final three episodes. A curiosity, "The Girl Who Was Death," isn't cricket for the series. It is a surreal fairy tale that plays like a long-lost episode of McGoohan's previous TV series, Danger Man, with Number 6 avoiding a series of assassination attempts before saving London "from the mad scientist." But "Once Upon a Time" and "Fallout," both written and directed by McGoohan, get back to business, as Number 6 suffers "Degree Absolute"--his most intense, last-man-standing, psychological probe yet--at the hands of Number 2 (Leo McKern, reprising his role from the episode "The Chimes of Big Ben") and at last prepares to meet the elusive Number 1. Those who just want to sample this cult fave series are advised to stick with the intriguing first episodes included in Set One. --Donald Liebenson
Amazon.com video review:
If a top-level spy decided he didn't want to be a spy anymore, could he just walk into HQ and hand in his resignation? With all that classified knowledge in his head, would he be allowed to become a civilian again, free to go about his life? The answer, according to the stylish, brilliantly conceived 1960s British TV series The Prisoner, is a resounding no. In fact, instead of receiving a gold watch for his years of faithful service, our hero (played by Patrick McGoohan) is followed home to his London flat and knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he finds himself in a picturesque village where everyone is known by a number. Where is it? Why was he brought here? And, most important, how does he leave?
As we learn in Episode 1, Number 6 can't leave. The Village's "citizens" might dress colorfully and stroll around its manicured gardens while a band plays bouncy Strauss marches, but the place is actually a prison. Surveillance is near total, and if all else fails, there's always the large, mysterious white ball that subdues potential escapees by temporarily smothering them. Who runs the Village? An ever-changing Number 2, who wants to know why Number 6 resigned. If he'd only cooperate, he's told, life can be made very pleasant. "I've resigned," he fumes. "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own." So sets the stage for the ultimate battle of wills: Number 6's struggle to retain his privacy, sanity, and individuality against the array of psychological and physical methods the Village uses to break him.
So does he ever escape? And does he ever find out who Number 1 is? "Questions are a burden to others," the Village saying goes. "Answers, a prison for oneself." Within this complete 17-episode set (which contains the entire series), all is revealed. Or is it? --Steve Landau
Amazon.com video review:
It takes a Village to incarcerate The Prisoner. This set contains three mind-bending episodes from one of television's most subversive series. Number 6's (Patrick McGoohan) "strong sense of identity" is put to the ultimate test in "The Schizoid Man." You can't blame him for feeling more disoriented than usual. Everyone is addressing him as Number 12, and he is recruited by yet another new Number 2 to impersonate--you guessed it--himself. The Prisoner was really in the "Zone" (as in "Twilight") with "Many Happy Returns," in which Number 6 at last makes his escape from a seemingly deserted Village. Making his arduous way back to London, he must convince his former superiors of the Village's existence. "It's Your Funeral" finds an ever-vigilant and defiant Number 6 refusing to fall for yet another Village gambit ("I will not cooperate," he thunders). But is a threat to assassinate the outgoing Number Two for real, or is it the work of "jammers," who invent "make-believe plots" to confuse the authorities? A bonus feature of this set is an early 30-minute interview with Bernie Williams, the series' original production manager. He comments that his job was made more difficult because the show's premise was "unclear even to those who made it." This is small comfort to Prisoner devotees who parse each episode, which makes this set, of course, essential. --Donald Liebenson
