The Prisoner by Jack Kirby

Rest in Peace Patrick McGoohan

I shan't pretend to be familiar with Patrick McGoohan's work outside of The Prisoner. I have read that J K Rowling approached Mr McGoohan in the early stages of the first Harry Potter adaptation, with an eye to seeing him cast as super-wizard Dumbledore; McGoohan refused on the grounds of ill health. Other than that, I'm familiar with his role as Edward I in Mel Gibson's Brit-basher Braveheart, and agenting about in Howard Hughes' sit-in favourite Ice Station Zebra. He'll always be Number 6 to me though, not for any quality sleight elsewhere mind you, but because his big-browed bruiser braining in The Village is indelible.

A danger man hands in his notice and retreats home, where he is drugged. He wakes up in The Village, a bureaucratic deprogramming nightmare town with indistinct global allegiance. Throughout the series McGoohan is battered physically and psychologically as a parade of Number 2's attempt to learn his secret: why he's jacked it all in. They fail miserably. Prisoner is the quintessential renegade thriller. Where Bond is, more often than not, about committee sanctioned cruelty, Prisoner is a broad shouldered side-part scrapper out-thinking stooges who want to steal the hinge of his identity. McGoohan utterly convincing as an autonomous island of resistance in a sea of compliance.

Here's the opener:



Rather than prattle on, why not let McGoohan have the last word? Via the unending gift of YouTube, here's a couple of interview pieces with the man himself, talking about the motivations behind the series. First a 1977 interview with Warner Troyer, courteously of The Ontario Educational Communications Authority. Here, McGoohan answers questions from an unusually informed and inquisitive live studio audience:

The Prisoner Puzzle Part 1

The Prisoner Puzzle Part 2

The Prisoner Puzzle Part 3

The Prisoner Puzzle Part 4

Lastly we have an older McGoohan pontificating on the show's appeal and meanings in an extract from Channel 4's never-repeated 1984 documentary Six Into One: The Prisoner File. Judging by the rapidly receding sunlight behind him, this was snatched at day's end. McGoohan's a little nice, like he's had a few to drink, and is just getting to the chatty part of the booze. A great way to remember a great man.

The Prisoner File Part 1

The Prisoner File Part 2

Enjoy.

Be seeing you.