The excellence of Patrick McGoohan's groundbreaking series needs no rehearsing here - if you haven't discovered it yet, you're doing yourself a grave disservice... And here's the perfect medium - the astonishing clarity of the DVD transfers belies the age of the series (was this really made in the Sixties?), and there are the usual tempting extras - including material on all the various actors who played the tormenting Number Two. The much-contested sequence of episodes (on its last TV outing, Channel 4 showed them in the wrong order) is solved here by the best possible options - there is, of course, no definitive numbering. As the company has delayed further releases in the equally unmissable Danger Man series (Number Six when he was still John Drake), this will do to be going on with…and if you want more…
Aside from a few isolated exceptions, the truly original, inventive and daring is absent from current television. Risk has been largely eliminated. Individual control is rare. Catching the advertiser's demographic is paramount. When something new does rise to the surface it is eventually starved of air by an uncomprehending network. The last great work of TV nonconformity, Twin Peaks, initially thrived then petered out through lack of support by a puzzled television company. Even now David Lynch has seen Mullholland Drive, his 1998 noir drama, dumped by ABC in the United States without being broadcast. Shows that shine with originality are perceived by the mass public and television companies as flaming meteors blazing across the sky then disappearing into dust.
In the sixties, the decade of artistic boundary-stretching, the archetypal TV cult was The Prisoner. We are familiar now with the elements that constitute its puzzle; a spy drama rising from the ashes of another, an allegory of individual identity amongst conformity, numbers replacing names. The literary and artistic influence is also unusual for the time; the language of Orwell, the bureaucratic nightmare of Kafka, the inverted logic of Lewis Carroll, the surreal landscape of Magritte and Delvaux. How could such a thing possibly work?
Its existence is due to the success of Dangerman, the persistence of its star, Patrick McGoohan, and the hunch of the man in control of the company that made it, Lew Grade. How it has managed to sustain its cult appeal is something less tangible. Patrick McGoohan, famously reluctant to discuss the show and prickly in interviews, once retorted, "If one gives answers to a conundrum it is no longer a conundrum." We are hardwired to seek order and meaning from confusion. When we see a puzzle we must solve it. Nobody could solve The Prisoner. Not even its creator.
In seventeen episodes, mostly made on a tight schedule, quickly written and filmed, a man imprisoned by unknown authorities (possibly secret service ex-employers) is in the process of being brainwashed or debriefed while all the time trying to escape. Within this straightforward formula the possibility to extend the drama into flights of fancy was large. Using the generous budget of ITC and with the good luck to have the oddity of Clough William-Ellis' Portmeirion village for location shooting, each episode played with a James Bond psychodrama of paranoid cat and mouse. Its opening sequence is one seared into our consciousness and has become a classic emblem of the art of television. While Ron Grainer's theme thunderstrikes out, a story unfolds in rapid edits; a dashing man driving a sports car, a Point Blank corridor march to a dark office, a desk-thumping resignation, a gassed bedroom and drugged awakening into a strange wonderland. This is one of the great set-ups of genre drama. A Gulag Priory for a Bond with a nervous breakdown.
McGoohan (once a Bond candidate himself) had already made a conventional spy drama with Dangerman and was now taking it into a more hallucinogenic arena. Perfect for 1967. Given the initial idea by Dangerman writer George Markstein and hiring director Don Chaffey (responsible for Jason & The Argonauts and many of the best Avengers episodes) McGoohan set up his own production company to oversee the series. Using a family of cast and crew, a singularity of vision was able to be preserved. McGoohan wrote and directed many episodes himself and rarely had to bow to outside pressure.
Viewing it now, one is struck by many things: McGoohan has a presence and authentic intelligence lacking in most leading actors of genre drama. His single-minded drive to create such a thought-provoking series while maintaining artistic control is in perfect parallel to the struggle of his character. The look of the series, like the toy-box architecture of Portmeirion, is a mix of the familiar and the jarring; the fantasy element of Number Two's control room allows a science fiction flavour, the costumes are uniforms outside of fashion never betraying a particular time or place. The freedom ITC allowed him to produce episodes as unconventional as the penultimate one - effectively a theatrical two-hander between McGoohan and Leo McKern as Number Two - is remarkable. Few high profile shows would have such courage today.
Some of the fantasy episodes (such as the saloon bar westerns or Kenneth Griffith's Napoleon) recall The Avengers without evoking the same sense of fun. Occasionally it takes itself too seriously and the studied oddness becomes tedious. Amongst the many great character actors lending it a gravitas (Eric Portman, Leo McKern, Kenneth Griffith) are some who provoke sniggers of camp recognition (Peter Wyngarde, Darren Nesbitt, Patrick Cargill, Donald Sinden). The final episode, written and directed by McGoohan under pressure, was intended to provide a final revelation behind the struggle. In the rush to finish, the symbolism of the concepts behind the show reached critical mass causing a confusing mess that satisfied few people and clarified little. It did, however, maintain the conundrum and stay true to the bravery of McGoohan's vision.
Before video there was little opportunity to digest and review a series such as The Prisoner. Only word of mouth and a repeat run every few years allowed its underground popularity to snowball. By the time Channel Four showed it as a showcase for a new channel in the Eighties, it was becoming a cult for the cognoscenti. Video releases added to this. Books, societies for people who like to meet up and dress up and web sites have made it the ultimate clique for the literate fan boy and girl. Now we have the limited edition box set DVD with which to revel in the enigma of one of the most discussed television programmes of all time.
It now takes its place amongst a satellite-beamed plethora of programmes, jostling for space on the video shelves with The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, The Avengers and The Champions. In the last ten years most of the great ideas and all of the best writing in TV has been in cop dramas (Homicide) and comedy (Frasier). Occasionally a mid season X Files will astonish or a Star Trek Next Generation will impress, but few fantasy programmes have the ability to approach the invention or verve of The Prisoner. That's why it is still a cult.
Video Crime
by Barry Forshaw
It's a cause for genuine regret that the Warner animated series of Batman has never been treated with any kind of respect in this country. Chopped up and shown in braindead Kiddie TV shows, it's clear that no producer has ever looked at how adult and intelligent these episodes are (far more, for instance, than the last Batman live-action movie), and only the Cartoon Network has shown many of the episodes uncut. The follow-up series, Batman of the Future (Warner), lacks the dark and brooding quality of the earlier series (which clearly showed the influence of the grim Tim Burton movie vision, even re-using Danny Elfman's pounding symphonic theme from the first film), but this series is still well worthwhile. Featuring a young protege of Bruce Wayne's in a superpowered suit (sans cape), the series is still rich with invention and wit. But quite its cleverest coup is featuring an ageing and crusty Bruce Wayne, directing his impetuous young follower electronically from the dark confines of Wayne mansion. The contrast between the old guru and the inexperienced acolyte (the latter inevitably inclined to screw things up) is always a safe theme in fiction, and so it proves here. The latest volume, Spellbound, features episodes of varying quality, but at its best it is highly diverting, even if Batman: The Animated Series remains the finest achievement in this field.
How long will it last? The current liberalisation of film censorship is very welcome, and who could argue if fewer restrictions for adults mean a few more for children? The new climate has inspired one distributor, Tartan Video, to initiate a unique offer: they are planning to replace censored copies of the films at half price. Welcoming the BBFC's move to liberalise classification standards for 18-category films, they applaud that fact that over eighteens will finally be treated as responsible adults with free choice over what they want to watch. But as Tartan is a company with a real knowledge of the products they sell, they are keen to be able to offer films in versions the director intended. To this end, they have asked the BBFC to re-classify all their previously censored films. Under more realistic guidelines, the uncut versions will be available for the first time ever in the UK. Owners of previously censored Tartan video films will be able to send the tapes to the company's offices and receive the new uncut versions for half price, as they become available. The returned tapes will be donated to charities promoting civil liberties. We'll report in this column when the offer begins. Pessimist that I am, though, I'm sure a politician wishing to make a name for himself will soon step into the arena and plead for greater censorship. After all, neither of the main political parties has shown anything but a nanny-ish attitude to what adults may watch.
While Carlton TV may not be exactly a byword for the very best the medium has to offer, its video arm is a repository for some really interesting material, such as the simultaneous DVD and VHS release of The Remorseful Day, the final film in Colin Dexter's long-running (and highly successful) Inspector Morse series. This has all the authority and interest of the series at its very best (not to mention John Thaw's definitive portrayal of the morose, opera-loving cop), and, of course, there is something about it which makes it different from all other episodes in the series. If you haven't seen it, it would be a shame to remind you of that.
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