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By Joshua Tyler
| Endless
The television had just started experimenting with big ideas in the 1960s. The twilight zone is going strong. The external limits hits the next level, and Trek Star took the world where no one had gone before.
But no one had a bigger idea than Patrick McGoohan.
Fresh off the spy hit Danger manMcGoohan was a UK bonafide star. So when British ITV gave him Carte Blanche made his dream show, he introduced a complete curve ball: a dystopian, dystopian anti-spy series where no one has a name, the beach is scary, and escape is impossible.
The show was called The prisoner. And it is either a genius or nervous breakdown on television. Maybe it’s two.
Why did the prisoner fail
On the surface, The prisoner Simply: a secret agent resigns, is kidnapped, wakes up in a strange prison to a strange destination called the village, and then spends each episode trying to escape or find out who runs the place.
His name?
Number Six.
Answer them to every question he asks?
“You are number six.”
Its weekly response?
“I’m not a number, I’m a free man!”
But reality The prisoner is that no one was free. Not number six, it’s not the people who control it, and definitely it’s not the cast and crew that makes the show.
Patrick McGoohan, Star and Creator of the Prisoner
Patrick McGoohan played number six, but he wasn’t just the star of the show.
He was The prisonerCo-creator, executive producer, director, and at times, writer.
McGoohan had one goal: use his spy show as a platform to pay war against compliance, surveillance, and a modern society that is increasingly controlled.
However, the network that paid for him to make the show had very different goals.
Patrick McGoohan was hot off starring in the popular series Danger manAnd the network wanted more of that, just maybe a little weir.
McGoohan Kafka gave them Technicolor.
From the beginning, The prisoner is a power battle, on the screen and off.
The chapters of the prisoner were an argument
The TV network wanted 26 episodes. McGoohan said the story needed only 7.
In theory Patrick and the network were at risk at 17, but every chapter produced after the seventh is a wild, crazy rollercoaster of whiplash tonal, and that is almost certainly not an accident.
One chapter has mental control and murder.
The next has a bad butler and cowboy duels.
At one time, number six runs into office.
Later, it changes bodies with a different actor.
At one time six boxes on the beach until someone plays “pop goes the weasel.”
The prisoner dare his audience to abandon the show and change the channel.
And all that wonder was nothing next to the finale.
Entitled “Fall Out”, chapter 17 finished the show by breaking the whole audience.
After 16 episodes of questions and mysteries, he provided no answers. No real closure. Imagine how you felt after the Lose Finish, and multiply it with ten.
Patrick McGoohan went to hide after the end of the prisoners
Instead of giving the audience what he wanted The prisoner It ended on the trial of a psychedelic court room, a man in a monkey mask, and a final turn that could be a metaphor … or could be a complete meaningless gibberish.
Fans were so confused and angry, until Patrick McGoohan was short went to hide.
That’s not a joke. Literally, he fled from the country and hid out for a few days.
Imagine if Lose to end, and Damon Lindelof Having to relocate to a bunch in Canada. We leave that guy away waaay Too easy.
Patrick McGoohan did not want to explain anything. Ever. He never told the cast what the show meant. He never told the network what the finale meant. He hardly said even himself. He thought giving answers was a betrayal.
But The prisonerViewers did not tuned in for an enigma wrapped roodle wearing a bowler hat. They wanted the Cold War spy play. What they received was the crisis of existential hostages starring an angry metaphysical philosopher.
Each week, there was a new number two. Sometimes charming. Sometimes dreaded. Sometimes he was Leo McKern in a poor wig. But real the show great evilNo. One? The main villain behind everything?
You only see it once. In the finale.
The real number one
Spoiler: He Number Six itself.
Have it? He was his own prisoner all over.
McGoohan thought he was intense.
It made no sense at all in the context of the plot.
Even if The prisoner Having made any sense, the audience would not have been able to interpret it because ITV broadcast the show out of order, randomly, in different regions.
Some viewers saw the finale before the pilot.
Others failed completely.
In the US, CBS broadcast only 16 of the 17 episodes.
It was like watching Initial with the rails scrambled.
The end of the prisoner
After the ending of the broadcast, McGoohan left the UK forever. He moved to California and started working with Peter Falk, collaborating on episodes of Columbo.
McGoohan instructed and wrote a number of episodes from the iconic detective show. He also starred guest opposite Falk in four Columbo Episodes with two of those appearances winning Emmy Awards.
The collaboration between McGoohan and Falk was so iconic that a new book even for their work together called In the destructive element of immersion: Peter Falk and Patrick McGoohan in Columbo-Land.
But Patrick has never been involved in anything as wild and ambitious as The prisoner. again.
When it broadcast in 1967, The prisoner Drew a modest score, but no sweeping buzz. It ended with confusion, frustration, and a canceled second season. A second term, which was to be fair, Patrick McGoohan probably never intended to do anyway.
The prisoner failed but eventually succeeded
Not until decades later – after DVDs, postoperative, and conspiracy blogs – that The prisoner At last it is called a masterpiece of anti -culture TV.
He has gone on to influence other creative people since then. If you have seen both The prisoner and the above LoseYou’ve probably noticed very direct inspiration.
Shows like Mock peaks. Narrative. Black mirror as well as movies like The matrix and Initial all owed The prisoner a debt of gratitude too.
For all her craziness, The prisoner Now considered by the majority as great and breaking new ground.
That’s especially true for the first seven episodes of the show. The only seven episodes Patrick McGoohan really wanted to make them.
All seven episodes are essential for the genre fans but if we pick The prisonerBest effort, it’s the fifth of the show, called “The Schizoid Man.”
By this point in the series, number six has been captured in the village for a time. The various number numbers that have appeared and disappeared, failed to remove any information from him.
Therefore, the latest Number two hatches the most diabolical and complex plan yet: convincing number six that it is someone else.
A complex campaign of Brainwashing begins, where the village masters work to make number six question its own identity. They tell him he is a twelve number, and even brings a duplicate into replacing it as number six.
The episode is a profound thinking game with much to say about the fragility of self -image and psychological treatment equipment.
And that is the case for each chapter The prisoner Production. They’re all trying to say something. Even the terrible crazy ones. Especially the terrible crazy ones.
Some do a better job of it than others, but McGoohan had a lot on his mind, and used The prisoner to say it all.
Whether the audience wanted it, or not.
In the end, The prisoner a battle between a visionist and his congregation.
He won the visionist.
And then he ran away.
