KT is not a number! She’s… uh, two letters.
THE PRISONER (1967-1968)
A few years ago, my dad introduced me to yet another cult classic, a British show called The Prisoner. I thought it was good fun, and I’ve recently been watching it again with my husband — prompted by news of AMC’s remake (starting tonight) starring Ian McKellan (Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings) and Jim Caviezel (Jesus from The Passion of the Christ).
(Um, yes. Something about that pairing amuses me more than it should.)
Unfortunately, the early reviews of the remake haven’t been terribly positive (for example, the LA Times’ Robert Lloyd, the Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan, and NPR’s David Bianculli) — McKellan’s performance is praised, but the critics suggest that it’s hard to care about the characters. Which is an interesting thing to say, given the nature of the original.
The premise of The Prisoner is that a British secret agent played by writer/producer/star Patrick McGoohan has resigned for mysterious reasons. He finds himself kidnapped and placed in an isolated community known only as The Village, where residents are known only by numbers. The 17-episode series chronicles our hero’s attempts to generally defy whoever is in charge of The Village this week, a part played by a new actor in almost every episode but always known as Number Two. (Who is Number One? Good question.) Our hero is known as Number Six.
With regard to what writer John Seavey calls a storytelling engine, this is a pretty tight one. The various Number Twos are tasked with uncovering why Number Six resigned (with the caveat that he may not be broken; he’s important) while simultaneously blocking Number Six’s efforts to figure out exactly where The Village is located, how to get out, and even which side is running it. The Cold War is rarely discussed outright, mostly because it’s just a given, but it couldn’t be more plainly in the background.
The plots are a series of the Twos’ ingenious attempts to disorient Six, win him over, brainwash him, or otherwise trick him into explaining himself, and Six’s ingenious attempts to escape in any way he can. But even with some very clever schemes, McGoohan found that there were a limited number of stories he wanted to tell with this format — thus, only 17 episodes, though there are conflicting stories as to exactly how that number was decided upon.
Since it’s essentially a guest role, the Number Twos are never deeply explored, though it is implied that the constant turnover in Number Twos is directly related to their constant failure to glean anything from Six. In fact, the only two characters who appear in every episode are Number Six himself and Number Two’s mute midget butler. (Yes, really. And he apparently went on to play an Ooma Loompa.) But the butler’s role is essentially set dressing, leaving only Number Six.
Six is a somewhat Bond-ish sort of hero: good looking, capable of any skill that happens to be useful, determined, clever, and taciturn. As such, his appeal is a little hard to pinpoint, but I think it’s heavily dependent on McGoohan’s charisma. His Number Six is resilient in the face of despair, sardonically witty in the face of hopelessness. Perhaps Caviezel’s Six is missing some part of that.
[After the jump: Rover,
the Village, and the '60s]
Philosophically, The Prisoner is very much about the struggle to remain an individual, even in an Orwellian society where conformity is not so much expected as enforced. Although gorgeously Italianate in appearance (the location is actually a resort town in Wales) and populated by parades of seemingly happy people, The Village’s veneer of harmony barely tries to cover up its more sinister purposes. No statue is complete without surveillance camera eyes, the hospital has rooms of people being re-educated, and everyone gets out of the way for Rover, the giant white weather balloon that chases down and suffocates its targets. (Yes, really.)
“I am not a number; I am a free man!” Six roars in the show’s lengthy opening sequence. And through his example, personal integrity is held up as a high virtue. Repeatedly, the show asks how we know whom we can trust — and the answer is usually “only yourself.” Six’s loyalty to Britain seems to be intact, yet as the series progresses, it appears increasingly likely that Britain has decided Six knows too much to be allowed to resign. The show’s “down with the man!” message is as very ’60s as the lava lamps that can be spotted here and there around the set. But though it’s a product of its times, the intricate puzzle of the plots and the strong individualistic message have held up well.
Are you planning to watch the remake? Do you have a favorite plot or moment from the original? Join me in the comments! Be seeing you.
