Le prisonnier

This has become by far my favorite series of all time, so much so I have given up watching television altogether and turned to DVD's instead. That's not to say it's the best show ever, but it's one of those things you can watch as fluff action-adventure entertainment one day, or chew down to its bones, if you like, the next. That is, it doesn't require intelligence and concentration or an easy day at the office to enjoy, but if you've read a few books or have philosophical leanings you can amuse yourself by wringing quite a bit out of it.

On that note, it's especially fun to watch this series in conjunction with Danger Man/ Secret Agent. Although it isn't uncommon to have the same actors work together on different series, there is a town full of spies in DM/SA

referred to as the Village in the episode "Colony Three" which is the center of a debate on whether Number 6 and John Drake are the same. (McGoohan categorically denies this, but Markstein says it's true. Perhaps there is a legal hurdle involved? We will probably never get that information.)

I recommend watching them in order, so you can see Number 6 gradually abandon his open desperation and anger ("Arrival" to "The Chimes of Big Ben") for a cool and calculated needling of the system from within ("A, B and C" to "Hammer Into Anvil"). They try drugs, brainwashing, torture, virtual reality, letting him escape, and even babysitting to get him to talk. Each episode will appeal to someone different, some funny, some aggravating, but they all fit together by "Fall Out"; I have never met anyone who was not surprised at the final episode. It's truly extraordinary!

You will find references to the Prisoner are made constantly in other shows and movies, especially Sci Fi. The character Bester uses the Village greeting on Babylon 5; I have seen Village interrogation methods on the Pretender, John Doe and Farscape (whose leading man has an acting style similar to McGoohan's and a character similar to Number 6, IMHO, especially if you watch "A, B and C"); Number 2's trademark sphere chair is used on everything from Austin Powers to ads for American Idol.

The Village itself has appeared in tribute episodes of the Invisible Man and, of all things, the Simpsons ("The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"). Rover has actually appeared on the Simpsons twice!

I believe it's a classic that shouldn't be missed for anyone who ever feels trapped by rules that make little sense. If you like quoting Brazil and Office Space you'll find plenty of quotes to add to your collection here. My friends and I have even started referring to each other by number at work!

Be Seeing You!

Just watched Once Upon A Time which for me is the best and most important episode in the series, the interplay between Patrick McGoohan and Leo McKern is quite simply brilliant. As for the series like many others I remember first seeing the show as a 10 year old, it left an indelible impression on me then and with time that impression hasn't faded one bit, I still consider it one of the finest television series ever created. I hope Hollywood nor anyone else attempt to remake it, it would be like a sad photocopy of the Mona Lisa, leave it alone please. To Patrick McGoohan and all those involved in creating it I'd just like to say 'THANK YOU'

For those who ask what the series is all about, I'd say watch it, and make your own mind up don't just accept my opinion on it, 'think' for yourself. Be seeing you.

The best non-comedic TV show I've ever seen, and certainly one of the most unique TV shows of any genre. A terrific blend of Kafka's drama/satire, fantasy, and spy action/thriller. There is also a healthy dose of humour in it, but nothing over-the-top like we have in today's TV shows. Although it consists of 17 episodes, I would consider the first 12 to be the core of the series. After those 12 we have mostly filler episodes, like the dull one in the Wild West, or the one in which McGoohan barely even appears. The last two episodes, the less-than-grand double-episode finale, are a bit too abstract and quite tiresome at times even. From the last 5 episodes I would only name "The Girl Who Was Death" as being quite good.

The best/most fun episodes are "Arrival", "Dance of the Dead", "ABC", "The General", "A Change Of Mind", and "Hammer Into Anvil". From the first 12, I would only single out "Schizoid Man" as being much weaker than the others.

Several things went into making this show so much fun. First of all, the location, the Welsh village. Secondly, having McGoohan in the lead; I cannot possible imagine any other actor playing Number 6 in the excellent, off-the-wall yet controlled manner in which he plays him. McGoohan hits all the right notes; his performance is just as eccentric as it needs to be. (For the uninitiated, he was among the 2 or 3 main candidates to be the first James Bond, but refused the role.) Thirdly, the highly unusual, original scripts. Fourthly, the series was filmed in the mid-60s, and the visual quality of TV shows from that decade is superior to anything that came before or after. And fifthly, the acting from all the others was on a high level.

Montage: a secret agent (Patrick McGoohan) storms into his superior's office and angrily resigns his post, for reasons unknown. A machine files away his Xed-out photo; he speeds away to his home. He enters his house and begins packing for a journey. Outside, a hearse pulls up to the curb. A pallbearer strides to the door. Knockout gas comes pouring in through the keyhole. When our hero awakes the room is the same... but the world outside is not.

We are in the Village, a picturesque nightmare co-fashioned by Orwell, Kafka, and Carroll. The unnamed agent has become Number Six in a population of equally nameless, creepily cheerful residents, headed by a shifting, and shifty, Number Two. Who is Number One? Well, that's the question, isn't it... In one direction are impassable mountains, in the other the sea -- and on patrol is a bizarre, lethal white balloon that hunts down those unwise enough to dare them.

Viewed today, "The Prisoner" seems so strikingly ahead of its time that one can only regard it as either a visionary masterpiece or a dazzling failure. Either way it is compulsive viewing. Co-creators McGoohan and George Markstein were seemingly at odds about what to make of it all, with McGoohan eschewing conventional James Bondisms for a more surreal, allegorical approach. (He himself wrote and directed some of the series' best and most bewildering episodes.) And truly "The Prisoner" works best when at its least explanatory and most hallucinatory. Not until "Twin Peaks" would another television show dabble this heavily in the logic of dreams.

McGoohan also believed the premise would only hold up over a limited run, and his concern seems justified. A few of the later of the seventeen episodes show desperation: low points include the feebly whimsical "The Girl Who Was Death," the plodding "It's Your Funeral," and "The General," which might as well be -- and nearly is -- an episode of Star Trek.

Yet at its best, in episodes like "Arrival," "Free For All," "Dance of Death," "Many Happy Returns," and the finale (one of the most astonishing hours ever programmed for television), the series achieves something extraordinary. Its influence reaches beyond such obvious successors as "Lost" and "The League of Gentlemen" -- and could you imagine "Brazil" or "The Matrix" without it? "The Prisoner" catches at a thread in our subconscious and pulls it loose; it tells us that something is genuinely wrong somewhere with the Great Big Picture. Its true antecedents are Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" and O'Brien's "The Third Policeman": nonsense that bleeds into spiritual unease.

It's not hard to understand why the series has a cult following, or why, love it or hate it, it still packs a punch. We are in the Village. Be seeing you...

Unfortunately, when you see see The Prisoner for the first time at an early age it tends to spoil television for the rest of your life. I was thirteen when I saw it in 1968, and for more than thirty years I keep hoping to find TV shows (and movies and books) that will give me the same rush of seeing vast, unexpected and unexplained vistas for the very first time. Too, too rare. Virtually non-existent. For The Prisoner didn't just present a new 'twist' (rare enough), it was a whole new world, with a wildly different culture, environment and rules, only gradually comprehended, if at all. And yet, strangely, it is more like the "real" world than any other television program, even the news, because The Prisoner doesn't explain itself, it just happens. If YOU want to know what's going on, figure it out for yourself... if you can. You might be right, you might be wrong, but if simplistic explanations are your comfort, you almost certainly WILL be wrong. Just like explorers of old. Just like real life. Though with the increasing homogenization of the world, real life is becoming, alas, more like television.