Although I was too young at the time to watch the original 1967 airing of this British TV series, I guess it must have been re-run in the eighties or perhaps my friend Alec had it on video and shared it with me? Whatever, at some point in the eighties I discovered The Prisoner and, hooked from episode one, I became, with Alec, a big fan. Here was a TV series that was not only entertaining but actually made you think. Nothing was ever what it seemed, no-one had a real name, you never knew who the good guys were and who the bad; it had a unique, surreal vibe, and it incorporated elements of science fiction, allegory, spy fiction and psychological drama.
The show was created while Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein were working on spy drama Danger Man (fun fact: Ian Fleming worked in the development stage of Danger Man, and its protagonist, played by McGoohan, announces himself as “Drake…John Drake”). The exact details of who created which aspects of The Prisoner are disputed though majority opinion credits McGoohan as the sole creator of the series, and it’s certainly true that it was McGoohan who pitched the idea verbally to station boss Lew Grade. One can only imagine the inner workings of Grade’s mind as the concept and plot were laid down for him; however, he went with it and the project was born.
So, what was that plot? An unnamed British intelligence agent is abducted and wakes up in a mysterious coastal location known to its residents as the Village. His captors designate him as Number Six and try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job, something he steadfastly refuses to divulge. His chief antagonist is styled Number Two (and no, we never satisfactorily learn who is Number One), the identity of whom changes with nearly every episode, allowing a roster of well-known sixties’ actors, like Leo McKern, Anton Rodgers and Peter Wyngarde, to play their part.
Most of the residents are prisoners themselves, while others are embedded as spies or guards. The Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides and the sea on the other, and any would-be escapees who make it out to sea are tracked by CCTV and recaptured by Rover, a huge mobile translucent white balloon-thing. Everyone uses numbers for identification, and most of the villagers wear a standard outfit consisting of coloured blazers, multicoloured capes, striped sweaters, and a variety of headwear such as straw boaters. They are generally very polite, though that tends to make you very suspicious of them.
Catchphrases abound, and I remember Alec and I gleefully repeating them ad infinitum: “I’m not a number, I’m a free man!”, “Be seeing you” and the gloriously libertarian “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!”. The latter phrase I had emblazoned on a t-shirt bought from the gift shop at Portmeirion in North Wales, where The Prisoner was filmed and which I visited on pilgrimage in 1987.
Let’s enjoy the opening credits, enhanced by the excellent soundtrack from Ron Grainer.
