Three things I do not trust: politicians, utility companies and those who profess to know the answers to the pertinent questions in The Prisoner. The latter was a one-off series consisting of seventeen episodes that aired on ATV in the United Kingdom from 1967 to 1968. It followed the trend of spy shows at the time, particularly the popular series Danger Man (1960–1968) which was both commissioned by the cigar-smoking TV impresario Lew Grade and featured actor Patrick McGoohan as its lead. Where The Prisoner differed from its predecessor was in its deliberate subversion of the traditional formula, embracing 1960s counterculture and expressing postmodernist allegories that are arguably even more relevant today.
The opening titles sequence superbly set up the series's premise perfectly with the titular character storming into his boss’s office and angrily handing over his letter of resignation (I love it when the tea cup leaps up from the saucer when McGoohan bangs his fist on the table with a thunder clap), before being subsequently gassed and abducted from his home. Our hero awakens to find himself in a cell designed to resemble his actual apartment in an idyllic coastal village.
Despite his defiant protest of not being a number, McGoohan’s nameless protagonist would be identified as Number Six, throughout the entire series. Over the course of the series, he would be subjected to dastardly scenarios designed to probe his mind and break his spirit in order to obtain vital information. The ingenuity of these methods were worthy of being films themselves; ranging from psychotropic drugs, elaborate role plays and mind-swapping; in fact the plot to A. B. and C. is strikingly similar to Christopher Nolan's 2010 espionage sci-fi thriller Inception; albeit, without the bloviated run time, bendy buildings and Han Zimmer's BWAAH horns.
The prison without bars would also house a number of other individuals; presumably from a similar background to our hero. Number Six’s perpetual dilemma would be distinguishing between the inmates and the warders. What was abundantly clear was Rover, a white weather balloon that belted out a terrifying scream whenever appearing on screen. The bouncing spherical menace would retrieve escapees with their horrified faces imprinted on its latex surface; the stuff of nightmares for any child at the time. Who knew a balloon could be this scary?
Number Six's desperation to escape from the ever surveillant confines of the Village was halted by a constantly changing rota of actors (including Leo McKern Peter Wyngarde and Guy Dolman) playing Number Two; the main antagonist. The predominantly British cast in the series, indirectly suggested Number Six's captors were possibly his former employers. Considering The Prisoner was produced during the height of the Cold War, the series does however allude to both sides being indistinguishable.
The rivalry between Number Six and the differing incarnations of Number Two was a key element of the series’s appeal. Each Number Two utilised a distinct method to extract information from Number Six. In turn, Number Six would exploit any potential weaknesses he found in his enemies. In the episode Hammer Into Anvil, Patrick Cargill’s sadistic Number Two is driven to insanity by our hero after inciting a female prisoner to committing suicide.
Throughout the series, the recurring questions were: who was the eponymous prisoner before he became Number Six, and why did he resign? For the tuned-in audience, however, the identity of Number One was the biggest mystery of them all. By the time of Fallout, the final episode, the completely bonkers surrealness, symbolic clues and general ambiguity of it all would prove perplexing to enough for the series to be analysed and scrutinised for decades ever since. Thus, apart from its overtly avant-garde 1960s visual aesthetics, much of The Prisoner’s enduring cult appeal stemmed from theorising their own interpretations.
What is indisputable, is how The Prisoner foresaw a dystopian world of mass surveillance and blatant abuse of our privacies. In the episode The Chimes of Big Ben, Number Two describes the Village as “A perfect blueprint for world order. When the sides facing each other suddenly realise that they’re looking into a mirror, they’ll see that this is the pattern for the future.” Eerily prophetic.
If Number Six represented the defiant individual, then the Village epitomised a collectivist world of conformity. Ironically, when Number Six’s right to be an individual is finally recognised by a kangaroo court in the climactic finale, a masked collective, representing various societal aspects, mockingly repeats his words. Thus, the mechanism of the collective hive mind continues. Back in London, the sound of Number Six’s front door sounding like his cell in the Village invites the theory that both he and the viewer are both prisoners in the grand scheme of it all. This is certainly food for thought, but frustrating for those expecting straightforward answers to recurring questions rather than symbolic allegories.
When Fallout premiered, the viewers were furious; resulting in McGoohan having to go into hiding with his family. Time, however, has been much kinder to the series and its star.
Given McGoohan’s lifelong scrutinisation regarding The Prisoner, it is possible to categorise him as either a brilliant mind whose work was misunderstood by the "rotten cabbages", or as the perpetrator of one of the greatest media pranks, comparable to Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast and Panorama’s spaghetti tree hoax in 1957. Regardless, The Prisoner remains a compelling work that is worth revisiting to attempt to comprehend its symbolic meaning. It's also a lot of fun watching people getting accosted by a weather balloon, too.
You can watch The Prisoner for free on YouTube, along with Century 21 Films' superb feature length documentary about the series, The Making of the Prisoner: Don't Knock Yourself Out.