Somewhere around 1965, actor Patrick McGoohan, who was born in America but moved to Ireland and then England as a kid, had a huge hit television series called Secret Agent. It had become a crossover hit in America as well, under the name Danger Man. McGoohan, who had turned down the role of James Bond just a few years before because he didn’t like the macho, womanizing personality of the main character, played an agent who relied more on brains and intuition than charm and violence.
McGoohan rarely gave interviews, but in a documentary called In My Mind, which he agreed to do in 1983, McGoohan told a story about one of the first episodes of Danger Man, where he had a scene where he was lying in bed with a woman and was supposed to roll over on top of her in order to open a safe that was mounted above the bed. McGoohan told them he wasn’t comfortable doing the scene, and in his words, “they never did another like it either.” The studios, and particularly media mogul Lew Grade, were thrilled with the success of Danger Man, and wanted to negotiate a big contract with McGoohan to continue.
There was only one problem. Patrick McGoohan was bored. And he apparently never bought into the notion that milking something that was popular was the definition of success. He actually told Lew Grade that he wanted to quit the show. Grade thought highly enough of McGoohan that instead of simply parting ways, he asked him whether he would be interested in doing something else, and McGoohan told Grade that he had actually been working on something. McGoohan later delivered a forty-page outline of his idea, and Grade said “Why don’t you just tell me about it.” Once McGoohan explained the idea, Grade said “That sounds crazy enough that it just might work,” and the rest is history. Grade gave McGoohan full rein to create and produce a series called The Prisoner.
One of the most beautiful things about The Prisoner is that McGoohan crafted a storyline for this series that was a blatant metaphor for his experience with the studio. The story is about a man who suddenly wakes up one day in an idyllic little community on some mysterious coast. The Village, as we will come to know it, is a charming blend of old Mediterranean and an ice cream parlor, with people wearing colorful outfits, mostly striped, that resemble the costumes worn by barbershop quartets. There are no cars, no roads out, no police department, and most importantly, no names. Everyone in The Village is referred to by a number, and when McGoohan is informed that he is Number 6, he immediately rejects the label. He often repeats, “I am not a number! I am a man!”
Another thing that makes the series so intriguing is that we know very little about Number 6’s past. We never even find out his real name. The only thing we know comes from the opening credits, when we see McGoohan driving a Lotus Seven sports car through the streets of what we assume is London, angry delivering a resignation letter, although the scene is silent so we don’t hear anything he says. And as soon as he leaves this meeting, driving with a satisfied smirk on his face, he goes home to pack a bag, throwing photos of some tropical paradise into his suitcase. But a gas suddenly filters through the keyhole of his house, putting him out of commission. And that’s when he wakes up in The Village.
We eventually learn that the reason they have sent him to The Village is to find out why he resigned, but Number 6 suspects that once he starts giving out any information at all, they are going to want more, so he refuses from the start to tell them anything, despite many promises if he does.
Each episode of The Prisoner centers around Number 6’s efforts to escape The Village, often with someone that he mistakenly trusts as an accomplice. Occasionally people show up that he knows from his past, and he tries to consort with them to find a way out. But he eventually learns that these people have been brought in to try and get him to talk.
He also slowly learns that he seems to be the only person in the Village who isn’t completely content with the fact that everything is provided for you, and that everyone else seems to be perfectly happy in this sexless, conflict free world. People spend their days doing whatever they please. There are signs posted everywhere, stating such wisdom as ‘A silent tongue makes a happy life,’ and ‘Questions are a burden to others.’
Each time McGoohan’s attempt to escape fails, he is called before Number 2, who as the name implies, is the second in command at the village. Another interesting aspect of the show is that almost every episode features a new Number 2, so that Number 6 always seems to end up asking the same questions, particularly about who is Number 1, and why he isn’t allowed to meet with Number 1 to learn why he’s here and what he has to do to get out.
The Prisoner is an existential masterpiece as Number 6 discovers, time after time, that the enemy he seeks answers from is as elusive as the answer to why he has been sent to this place. But the other interesting aspect of the series is that Number 6, who we all identify as the hero, always loses. There is no neat, happy ending where the audience gets what they want. But part of what people seemed to identify with was that Number 6 was determined to defy authority, a quality we can all admire. But there was an underlying element to his personality that also drove him to sabotage his own efforts to rebel. It’s a fascinating depiction of the duality of the human experience. And in fact, when the final episode aired, and the audience finally learned who number One is, the television station received thousands of angry complaints about the fact that the episode, which McGoohan wrote himself, didn’t give them the final answer they were hoping for,
In another of his rare interviews, in 1977, with a guy named Warner Troyer, McGoohan explained that he originally planned seven episodes for the show, but that he once again found himself a prisoner of his own success because once the studio execs saw the first few episodes, they realized they had another potential hit on their hands. So McGoohan eventually agreed to a compromise, producing seventeen episodes, five of which he wrote himself.
Although the show wasn’t an immediate smash, it quickly developed a cult-like following that has never really gone away. In that same interview, you can see that McGoogan, who never lost his cynical attitude toward success or the system, was delighted by the fact that so many people understood exactly what he was trying to accomplish, and much of what makes the show a success is that it is so wide open to interpretation. McGoohan even expresses how much he loved the fact that many people saw symbolism and themes in the show that never even occurred to him while they were making it.
They were fortunate to get his daughter to agree to an interview for the later documentary, and one thing she made very clear was that the reason her father hated interviews so much was because he didn’t like trying to explain his work. He was of the opinion that the work should speak for itself. But just to indicate the duplicity of the man himself, when he was shown the original documentary, he was so angry that he insisted they start all over again. So he epitomized the internal struggle of Number 6 in his own life as well.
McGoohan also talks about how so many of the details of the show came about by happy accident. For instance, he was sent to the small village called Portmarian Village in Wales to shoot an episode of Danger Man a couple of years before he even thought about The Prisoner, but he was struck by the simplicity and charm of the place and thought it would make a great setting for a project. He also explains how the use a huge weather balloons as the object that captures anyone who tries to escape came about when their original prototype to capture escapees failed miserably. McGoohan just happened to spot a weather balloon and asked whether they would be able to get their hands on some of them. They ended up using over 6000 balloons during filming.
They did a remake of the show in 2009, starring Jim Cavaziel, a talented enough actor, but it really wasn’t possible to recapture the mystique of what McGoohan was able to create from his own disillusionment with the industry and presumably with the world. His distrust of progress and of success seemed to be the key elements that made this show an absolute masterpiece. You can find both seasons of The Prisoner on Amazon Prime.