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"The Prisoner" was a magnificent series. Unusually creative, it set the stage for trippin' series like the new Battlestar Galactica and LOST, or even M. Nigh Shmyalan's "The Village." Patrick McGoohan broke from the mold, making a spy series entirely original. It was 17 episodes filled with suspense, mystery... and philosophy.
"The Prisoner" opens with McGoohan,a former secret agent,resigning (ironically,his role in Danger Man was a prototype for 007,and Ian Fleming wrote the scripts) He finds himself in a strange,ritualistic Village under constant surveillance. He finds himself with a new name... Number Six. There's the constant search for Number Two, and the enigmatic,absent Number One. There's spying, trickery,the white killer balloon Rover. It's difficult to sum up,and I won't give away the ending. It's TOP SECRET!
"The Prisoner" is a true TV classic.
Patrick McGoohan was a great actor and gentleman. He was a man, not a number! (1929-2009)
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Oh, this is the coolest series to turn your hipster "I've seen it all" friends onto. They'll be amazed. Bought this for my father who had reminisced about it for years, he watched it with my ten year old brother. They both love it! I love it. Never shown even one episode to anyone who didn't immediately need to see more!
Rating:  -
I found this to be very good quality. One episode is also shown in its "unedited and uncut" version (which was never aired) so the quality of that is understandably low, but the high quality version that was aired is also included. No harm, no foul. The story imagines what happens when a British spy gets fed up with his job and quits. Well, he gets whisked off to some remote village for a little brain salad surgery. But they don't really want to hurt him, only break him, and he proves a tough nut to crack... maybe too tough! Complete with an interactive map of the village and a trivia quiz for each episode. Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" possibly got some inspiration from this "out there" show. And although it is never said directly, to me it seems obvious that his former superiors are behind the whole thing. Why? 1) To make sure he wasn't planning to defect to "the other side" and 2) To find out just how safe and secure their dirty secrets were locked up inside his head.
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This is a complete set of actor/producer/director/writer Patrick McGoohan's masterpiece -- a show that went over budget and was poorly understood in the late 60s... but which has since developed a cult following as a sci-fi/fantasy achievement more sophisticated than anything since -- even surpassing Star Trek in its intellectually challenging themes. "The Prisoner" surpasses even "Twilight Zone" for its mind warping endings. (Best episode in this regard is probably the outstanding "A, B, and C," in which the protagonist's dreams are invaded, yet he finds a way to turn the tables on the invaders!)
Most of what follows is an overview of The Prisoner. For details on DVD extras, jump to the last paragraph.
"The Prisoner" starts simply enough. A British intelligence agent (McGoohan) resigns angrily -- something we see in pantomine in the opening credits of every episode -- after which he is kidnapped and wakes up in a mysterious place called "the Village." It's a place, charming but isolated, where people are sent who know too much to be allowed to walk away.
We don't know whether the Village is run by Us or Them... for in the late 60s, Cold War paranoia was at a high point. If it is being run by Us (the West), the Village masters need to know for sure whether the protagonist (known as "the Prisoner" or "Number 6") intended to defect. They need INFORMATION.
It also might be run by Them: double agents pretending to work for the British but really in league with the Commies. In that case, they want to pick the Prisoner's brain for secrets. Again, they need INFORMATION.
The Prisoner, meanwhile, is equally anxious to find out which side really runs the village. No one trusts anyone! At first he wants only to escape... but fairly early on in the series, he declares he wants to "escape, come back, and wipe this place off the face of the earth."
So much for the premise. Everything above is essentially backdrop for the REAL struggle. As things progress, it becomes more and more apparent that this is an allegorical battle of the individual against society. THEY must break him; HE is determined to repel efforts to get inside his mind...
...yet even THAT is simplistic! McGoohan was subtle enough to understand that individual and society can't be mutually exclusive. Ultimately, they need each other. Societies need individuals for creativity, innovation, and leadership; individuals living outside of society face at best a brutal existence (a fact the marvelous episode "Many Happy Returns" explores). The question finally posed by the series is: can the individual maintain sufficient personal integrity while acknowledging that he/she is fated to be a "prisoner" of some society or another? What is the right balance? And so -- episode after episode explore not just the "spy who must escape" theme, but attempts by masters of the Village to make prisoners into happy little automatons.
McGoohan and his collaborators created a fictional place unique and yet so familiar that it serves to represent the whole world. There's the Control Room, intrusive government spying; the mysterious "Rover," a special effect that hasn't aged and which represents fear wielded by Authority... an enforcer in the form of an ominous white balloon; a mysterious little butler who never says a word, but always stands next to Authority; and the "Penny Farthing" bicycle symbol that serves as the Village's logo. Above all, everyone is known not by name but by a number... the Prisoner, or Number 6, has a relatively high number indicating his value to his captors. (He'd surely be given a position of authority if he cooperated.) But the real chairman of the Village is the ever-changing No. 2, who reports to the unseen No. 1, the shadowy uber-authority figure behind it all.
DVD Extras:
By far the best is the 16mm film on the final disk, showing location shooting at Portmeirion, a famous resort in North Wales. This priceless footage shows the original Rover (a horrible special effect that looks like a giant cupcake with a light on top) before McGoohan ingeniously replaced it with weather balloons. Then there's fascinating commentary on disk 5 with Production Manager Bernie Williams, and the alternate version of "Chimes of Big Ben" on disk 1. This alternate version shows the original music, opening credits, and closing credits -- which McGoohan wisely replaced. Still, it's fascinating to see how much the show evolved by constant improvements up till the first airdate.
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Possibly one of the best TV shows of all time. Requires thought from the viewer and a certain open mindedness. It helps to have or be familiar Secret Agent Man.
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