By Joshua Tyler
| Up to date
Tv was simply starting to experiment with large concepts within the Sixties. The Twilight Zone was going robust. The Outer Limits was hitting the subsequent stage, and Star Trek was taking the world the place nobody had gone earlier than.
However nobody had a BIGGER thought than Patrick McGoohan.
Recent off the spy hit Hazard Man, McGoohan was a bonafide UK star. So when Britain’s ITV gave him carte blanche to make his dream present, he delivered a complete curveball: A psychedelic, dystopian anti-spy collection the place nobody has a reputation, the seaside is terrifying, and escape is unimaginable.
The present was known as The Prisoner. And it’s both genius or a televised nervous breakdown. Perhaps it’s each.
Why The Prisoner Failed
On the floor, The Prisoner is straightforward: A undercover agent resigns, will get kidnapped, wakes up in a weird resort-like jail known as The Village, after which spends each episode attempting to flee or work out who runs the place.
His title?
Quantity Six.
Their reply to each query he asks?
“You might be Quantity Six.”
His weekly response?
“I’m not a quantity, I’m a free man!”
However the actuality of The Prisoner is that nobody was free. Not Quantity Six, not the individuals controlling him, and undoubtedly not the forged and crew making the present.
Patrick McGoohan, Star and Creator of The Prisoner
Patrick McGoohan performed Quantity Six, however he wasn’t simply the present’s star.
He was The Prisoner’s co-creator, government producer, director, and at instances, author.
McGoohan had one objective: use his spy present as a platform to wage conflict on conformity, surveillance, and an more and more controlling trendy society.
The community paying him to make the present, nonetheless, had very totally different objectives.
Patrick McGoohan was scorching off starring within the hit collection Hazard Man, and the community wished extra of that, solely perhaps a bit weirder.
McGoohan gave them Kafka in technicolor.
From the beginning, The Prisoner was an influence battle, each on display screen and off.
Episodes of The Prisoner Have been A Debate
The tv community wished 26 episodes. McGoohan stated the story wanted solely 7.
In idea Patrick and the community compromised on 17, however each episode produced after the seventh is a wild, insane rollercoaster of tonal whiplash, and that’s nearly actually no accident.
One episode has thoughts management and assassination.
The following has an evil butler and cowboy duels.
At one level, Quantity Six runs for workplace.
Later, he switches our bodies with a special actor.
At one level Six packing containers a man on the seaside till somebody performs “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
The Prisoner dared its viewers to desert the present and alter the channel.
And all of that weirdness was NOTHING subsequent to the finale.
Titled “Fall Out”, episode 17 completed up the present by breaking your entire viewers.
After 16 episodes of questions and mysteries, it offered no solutions. No actual closure. Think about the way you felt after the Misplaced finale, and multiply it by ten.
Patrick McGoohan Went Into Hiding After The Prisoner Finale
As a substitute of giving the viewers what it wished, The Prisoner ended on a psychedelic courtroom trial, a person in a monkey masks, and a last twist that may be a metaphor… or may be whole meaningless gibberish.
Followers have been so confused and offended, that Patrick McGoohan briefly went into hiding.
That’s not a joke. He actually fled the nation and hid out for a number of days.
Think about if Misplaced ended, and Damon Lindelof needed to relocate to a bunker in Canada. We let that man off waaay too simple.
Patrick McGoohan didn’t wish to clarify something. Ever. He by no means instructed the forged what the present meant. He by no means instructed the community what the ending meant. He barely even instructed himself. He thought giving solutions was a betrayal.
However The Prisoner’s viewers weren’t tuning in for a riddle wrapped in an enigma sporting a bowler hat. They wished Chilly Struggle period spy drama. What they bought was an existential hostage disaster starring an offended metaphysical thinker.
Each week, there was a brand new Quantity Two. Typically charming. Typically terrifying. Typically it was Leo McKern in a nasty wig.However the present’s actual large dangerous, Quantity One? The chief villain behind every thing?
You solely see him as soon as. Within the finale.
The Actual Quantity One
Spoiler: He’s Quantity Six himself.
Get it? He was his personal jailer all alongside.
McGoohan thought it was profound.
It made no sense in any respect within the context of the plot.
Even when The Prisoner had made any sense, the viewers would have been unable to decipher it as a result of ITV aired the present out of order, at random instances, in numerous areas.
Some viewers noticed the finale earlier than the pilot.
Others missed episodes totally.
Within the U.S., CBS aired solely 16 of the 17 episodes.
It was like watching Inception with the reels scrambled.
The Finish of The Prisoner
After the finale aired, McGoohan left the UK for good. He moved to California and started working with Peter Falk, collaborating on episodes of Columbo.
McGoohan directed and wrote quite a few episodes of the long-lasting detective present. He additionally guest-starred reverse Falk in 4 Columbo episodes with two of these appearances profitable Emmy awards.
The collaboration between McGoohan and Falk was so iconic that there’s even a brand new e book about their work collectively known as In The Damaging Aspect Immerse: Peter Falk and Patrick McGoohan in Columbo-land.
However Patrick was by no means concerned in something as wild and impressive as The Prisoner, once more.
When it aired in 1967, The Prisoner drew modest scores, however no blockbuster buzz. It ended with confusion, frustration, and a canceled second season. A second season, which, to be truthful, Patrick McGoohan most likely by no means meant to do anyway.
The Prisoner Failed However In the end Succeeded
It wasn’t till many years later—after DVDs, retrospectives, and conspiracy blogs—that The Prisoner was lastly hailed as a masterpiece of counterculture tv.
It’s since gone on to affect different creatives. In case you’ve seen each The Prisoner and the aforementioned Misplaced, you most likely seen some very direct inspiration.
Reveals like Twin Peaks, Severance, Black Mirror in addition to films like The Matrix and Inception all owe The Prisoner a debt of gratitude too.
For all its craziness, The Prisoner is now seen by most as a each sensible and groundbreaking.
That’s very true of the present’s first seven episodes. The one seven episodes Patrick McGoohan actually wished to make.
All seven episodes are a must-see for followers of the style, but when we’re choosing The Prisoner’s finest effort, it’s the present’s fifth, titled “The Schizoid Man.”
By this level within the collection, Quantity Six has been trapped within the village for some time. The varied Quantity Twos who’ve appeared and disappeared, didn’t extract any info from him.
So, the newest Quantity Two hatches essentially the most diabolical and sophisticated plan but: Persuade Quantity Six he’s another person.
A posh marketing campaign of brainwashing begins, during which the masters of The Village work to make Quantity Six query his personal identification. They inform him he’s Quantity Twelve, and even usher in a reproduction to exchange him as Quantity Six.
The episode is an intense thoughts sport with loads to say about concerning the fragility of self-image and the instruments of psychological manipulation.
And that’s true of each episode The Prisoner produced. They’re all attempting to say one thing. Even the loopy horrible ones. Particularly the loopy horrible ones.
Some do a greater job of it than others, however McGoohan had loads on his thoughts, and he used The Prisoner to say all of it.
Whether or not the viewers wished it, or not.
In the long run, The Prisoner was a battle between a visionary and his viewers.
The visionary received.
After which he ran away.
