The Red Circle

By Tom Nix

The Prisoner is the greatest 17 hours of television ever produced. In less than what one season of TV would run in today’s market, Patrick McGoohan was able to tell both the single most transcendent story ever broadcast to people’s homes and cement a legacy among a world of would-be prisoners.

As one of the comments on an earlier post pointed out, it took some kind of genius to come up with The Prisoner. The highest paid actor in the UK in the late sixties for his series Danger Man, Patrick McGoohan put in his papers shortly after the fourth season began shooting. His reasons were artistic. In the same meeting about his resignation from his secret agent show, he pitched the idea of The Prisoner, a show about a secret agent who resigns and is taken to a prison disguised as a holiday resort. What resulted was a show that not only pointed an accusing finger at the governments of the world, but the media, the corporations, the broadcast companies – and every single viewer who would turn on their TV every week.

It was the first time that a continued narrative TV show ever had something to say. And what it said was “turn off your TVs.” It was, and remains, a radical show. It is still a topic of debate, over 40 years after its original broadcast. It has inspired countless television producers, film directors, authors, comic book creators, musicians, and artists in that time period. The State of the Arts, as it were, would simply not be in the shape it is today if Patrick McGoohan had never charged into the Village’s control room to tell the nameless man in the chair that he is not a number.

It is all in the power of McGoohan’s delivery and demeanor. In any lesser show, the character being persecuted would have yelled it in defiance of the higher power. They would seek to overcome, and to be an individual again. Not so, here. McGoohan delivers his most famous line with the conviction of a deity. He is not decrying his status in the face of an authority. He is simply declaring it – letting them know that there is no point crushing what cannot be crushed. He is the spirit of freedom in all of us, and no matter what they do to him, he will never fight, and scratch against it. He will simply persevere because there was never any other option.

He plays the role with an intensity rarely seen in anything other than melodrama. He movements are quick, precise, and fierce. Number Six fights information with information. While there are certainly the classic sixties brawls seen so often in Bond films from time to time, Number Six is more content to use his brain against the revolving door of Number Two’s, the de facto leader of The Village.

Number Two’s sole task is to gather as much information about why the now Number Six resigned as possible. When one fails, another is brought in to top the previous job. The s never a mention of where the old Number Twos go. Perhaps this is all for the better.

Everything is attempted to get this information, by hook or by crook. Number Six is subjected to faked escape attempts, sentient man-hunting balloon droids, drug-induced states, hypnosis, body doubles, even a full brain transplant. This is heady sci-fi for the time, and most of it still effective.

At the end of the day, The Prisoner was not about following the exploits and adventures of Number Six as he consistently overcame and outsmarted the system. We were never supposed to root for his eventual escape and understanding. McGoohan wisely, and unconventionally wanted us to see ourselves as Number Six, struggling against the systems of our every day lives. His vision was not that the governments and media and authorities keep us locked up in or own quasi-realities. It was to show that we allow this to happen to ourselves.

Entertainment has rarely dared to be so obtuse, and yet so specific at the same time. Parsing the story of The Prisoner is no easy task – 40 years on, and there is still no definitive answer. Patrick McGoohan kept completely mum about the true underpinnings of the series all the way up to his death on January 13th, 2009. That’s just the way he wanted it. He didn’t invent The Prisoner to tell us about the nature of humanity. He invented The Prisoner to force us into telling ourselves about us, and the societal standards we so dearly cling to.

It could be the most counter-culture programming in the history of TV. Not only rallying against the machine, The Prisoner was decrying the individual itself, and the lack of motivation and determination to truly exercise what individuality means. To all the people who are tuning into the remake tonight, to all the people who will be watching football today, to all the people reading this article right now: Patrick McGoohan is telling you “You’re doing it wrong.” His was a character on a television show. It’s you who are the prisoners.

The Prisoner was such a bold, artistic vision that it inspired a legion of people to demand the extension of the series from 10 episodes to 17. And when the series failed to wrap itself up in any easy to digest way, it inspired those same people to bang on Patrick McGoohan’s door until he decided to exile himself from London permanently. Thankfully it inspired enough others to solidify its status as a classic of the medium.

No Longer a Number continues tomorrow with Part II: The Legacy of The Prisoner
and for an introduction to the series click here

In the meantime, please consider watching this extensive breakdown of The Prisoner’s opening credit sequence as interpreted by Jim Emerson. Emerson is Roger Ebert’s web editor, and his SCANNERS blog contains some fascinating articles on what makes cinema such an unforgettable medium to create within.

“We Want Information!” The Arrival of The Prisoner from Jim Emerson.

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