#WTW: The Prisoner

(#WhatThomWatched Number Fifteen....)

The Prisoner

(1967-1968, Don Chaffey/Pat Jackson/Patrick McGoohan/David Tomblin; A&E Home Video disc set)

This singular television program ran on BBC competitor channel ITV (the “I” is for “independent”) for 17 episodes. It set a bar for how challenging a show can be that has rarely been passed since. It’s not fully successful, but it’s never less than provocative and far-reaching. Unlike most television, it is the creative vision of a single person — Patrick McGoohan, its creator and star, author or co-author of some episodes, credited or uncredited director of others. Some of the episodes still rank with the finest television shows ever broadcast; some fail now only because their tricks or themes have been copied so many times since then; and still others fail because they represent such a huge conceptual reach that audiences then (and still now) can’t find its wavelength. But it’s always, at any point, thoroughly entertaining.

The Prisoner has a simple conceit: In the opening credits (with no audible dialogue, over a driving theme from Ron Grainer, also the composer of the iconic Doctor Who theme), the protagonist steers his mod convertible into a London parking garage, storms into a secure office with a letter of resignation, and causes a desk-pounding, teacup-spilling scene. He then speeds home with the proverbial smile-playing-about-his-lips, too focused on his upcoming island vacation to note the black hearse and top-hatted men following him. After being gassed and abducted, he wakes up in a posh apartment to discover that, along with hundreds of other (presumably) former spies and intelligence assets of unspecified nations and political orientations, he is a prisoner of the Village. This is apparently some sort of organized retirement for folks who served god-and-country and are too dangerous (or are too tempting as targets) to live freely, but our man chafes at the forced anonymity — each resident is known only by an assigned code number — and at the authority figures’ one repeated question for him: Why did he decide to resign? Now known only as Number Six, he explores the comfortable confines of the genteel (and escape-resistant) Village while being subjected to a series of complex mind games designed to wrest the answer from him, unsure at any moment who he can trust but always bedeviled by his lead jailor/torturer/inquisitor, Number Two. It’s a nigh-perfect hook for an episodic show, although its creators were wise to limit it to 17 installments — the hero can stay ahead of the captors, but he still has to lose every week — he cannot escape.

Over this premise McGoohan and co-creators George Markstein and David Tomblin layered an almost absurd (and often absurdist) amount of surrealistic detail, often choosing the boldest and least-expected visual over a more conventional one even at the expense of the narrative. This includes Village residents in incongruous costumes essaying incongruous leisure activities, a silent cadre of efficient henchmen-and-women who appear to arrange things behind the scenes, surveillance footage viewable by the leadership which can include any location and shots from improbable camera angles, a bevy of mysterious instrument panels and sinister contraptions, endless syringes and shots forcibly given which convey any magical outcome (up to and including switching two persons’ selves into the other bodies), and so on.

And typical to the show’s tone, lead antagonist Number Two is played by a different actor each week; as time goes on it becomes clear that each leader’s failure to break Number Six is resulting in them being replaced by some impenetrable management structure (Number One, possibly?), but for the first several episodes this is just another in a pile-up of disorienting detail which keeps us just as confused as Six. 

It's a feast, visually, and one that continually rewards careful watching. Signs and posters in the background feature Orwellian slogans, all rendered in the Victorian font used throughout the Village. Costumes are opulent and colorful and often dress residents in contrast to their actual functions. And many scenes are blocked and framed to emphasize confusion, mysterious purpose, and layers of reality; the shot below, taken from the key location of Number Two's control room, is a good example of this: facilitated communication via multiple devices; machinery with mysterious purpose, often (as here) outscaling its human operators; and reality interacting with mitigated reality on giant screens:

Watching the documentary that comes with the A&E 40th anniversary disc set (Don’t Knock Yourself Out, from 1997), it’s clear that not everyone associated with the show is on the same page about McGoohan (who does not participate). The series is indelible because of where it goes in the last several episodes, which were completely taken over by McGoohan; some of his colleagues think he was a genius who knew exactly what he was doing, and others speculate that he deliberately took the series off the rails because he was stuck — but there’s no doubt that what he did is unique, compelling, and an honest attempt to say something (and be) different. The last two episodes are still bracing and unexpected when viewed today. The Prisoner was clearly highly influential in many ways, and yet the ending doesn’t resemble anything else on television then or now — it’s closer to a highly intellectualized theater piece.

Reminds me of:

Stylish British 1960’s secret-agent shows, at least at first — obviously I’m reminded of my childhood public television discovery of The Avengers and all those kinky John Steed and Emma Peel costumes (even the Catherine Gale years had an indelible impact on impressionable minds). Those shows were flashier and less ideological but they still seemed to push the limits of television. 

That’s superficial, though: It’s more interesting to consider which other dramatic series have been so much a product of an auteur with a singular vision. David Lynch’s 1990-1991 run of Twin Peaks not only held a similar cachet but was also very peculiar (almost beyond reason) and also let down a large percentage of its fan base when it could not bring all of its story threads and themes to a satisfyingly neat conclusion. The last few episodes of Prisoner at least manage to say exactly what its auteur McGoohan wanted to say: some of the passages are nonsensical, but others have undeniable power, with imagery as fine as any the series has to offer — and all of them would be unthinkable as a conventional product of television-by-committee.

When The Prisoner was originally airing in Britain, it would inevitably have played on the public’s fervor for and familiarity with the previous Danger Man series, in which McGoohan played secret agent John Drake. McGoohan can certainly play other roles and could have created a distinct agent character, but instead he seems to be deliberately and cannily connecting his previous project to this one. Many actors from Danger Man show up again here; the deeply researched Danger Man fansite identifies fifty-six such crossovers, though in no case can an actor be definitively said to be playing the same character in each show. Of course that didn’t stop the theorist-fans from finding connections that “prove” Danger Man’s John Drake is Number Six — after all, any former colleagues or opponents that Drake might have known would be similarly under alias or assigned a number in the Village of The Prisoner. Even without considering the earlier show, the heavy reuse of actors and very few recurring roles (with just a couple of exceptions) adds to the sense of disorientation.

But then — the guilt!

I’d never seen Danger Man and my experience of watching The Prisoner really made me fall for McGoohan. I’m now eager to see it and fortunately for me Shout! Factory did a new DVD set a few months ago which includes all of the earlier shows — literally, two different but tightly related British series (39 half-hour episodes between 1960-1962 and then 47 hour-long episodes in a revamped format from 1964-1967; confusingly called Secret Agent in their U.S. runs). I understand that it’s frothier and more conventional, but even the possibility that his character John Drake is destined to become Number Six makes me want to see it. Though note: At 17 discs, it’ll be a while before the #WTW comes out.

I’d also like to start seeking out some of McGoohan’s film performances. Silver Streak (where he plays the big bad) was one of my favorite films as a kid, but I don’t remember him over the Pryor and Wilder shenanigans. I also noticed the other day that The Quare Fellow, one of those items in my Netflix streaming queue which appeared there at some point in the past (so long ago that I can’t remember why — I’m sure you have yours too) is a starring role for McGoohan from 1962 — I will bump it just a smidge upward in my eventual inevitability index. (And yes, I realize he’s in Scanners. Which has a new Criterion edition, spine #712.)

Pitch:

It takes a bit to warm up to McGoohan here — he’s prickly, self-righteous and uncompromising. But you can’t take your eyes off him. Give him an episode and a half and you’ll be hooked. The middle eight or so stand with the best television episodes in existence, and even with the problems that start to crop up, you’ll want to stay tuned through the sometimes bitter end.

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