In the summer of 1968, the summer after my freshman year in college, I became captivated with a series aired on CBS entitled The Prisoner.  It was a British show, produced by ITV and aired in Great Britain the previous autumn.  It was quite unlike anything else on television.

The show starred the Irish-American actor Patrick McGoohan, who originated the show’s concept and was a co-creator of the series; he also wrote and directed several episodes under pseudonyms.  The series was part spy tale, part science-fiction, and part psychological thriller, but more an examination of the themes of liberty, isolation, and anonymity in the modern culture.

In the opening episode, a British secret agent (McGoohan) angrily tenders his resignation from the agency that employs him.  (Speculation was that the agent was purportedly John Drake, a character McGoohan had played in a previous spy drama series entitled Danger Man in Britain and Secret Agent in the U.S., but the series never addressed the issue.)   After returning to his London flat, he is gassed into unconsciousness, only to awake in a mysterious location known simply as The Village.

The series used the iconic grounds of the Hotel Portmeirion in the northern Wales town of the same name to serve as The Village.  The architecture, reminiscent of the style common in the town of Portofino in Italy, lent a distinctly surrealistic air to the series.

The identity and national affiliation of the masters of The Village were never revealed.  Everyone in the town was referred to by a number, with names never used.  The on-site director of The Village was “Number Two,” a role that featured a different actor each episode.  McGoohan’s character was known as Number Six.

The theme of the show was neatly summarized in the opening montage of each episode.  Number Two tells Six, “We want information.  Information.  INFORMATION!”  Six replies, “You won’t get it!”  Two counters, “By hook or by crook, we will…”  Each episode uncovers a new, devious attempt by the new Two to pry information from Six; each episode sees an elaborate attempt by Six to escape the island; and every episode concludes with Six reincarcerated in his home in The Village.

The Prisoner ran for seventeen episodes; only sixteen were aired in the U.S., as one episode was considered too political by the network.  But the fascination with the series and its cultural impact has survived over the ensuing forty-plus years.  DVD boxed sets, several documentaries, and numerous homages in various media attest to The Prisoner’s unabated popularity.  And now, in 2009, the American Movie Classic channel is presenting a six-part miniseries adaptation, airing in two-hour blocks yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Undoubtedly, the network will re-run the series in the near future.  [The first two episodes re-air tonight at 6 PM EST.]

The current rendition features Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ, Angel Eyes) as Six, and Ian McKellen (Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code) as Two.  Caviezel’s performance is somewhat pedestrian and lacks the intensity of McGoohan’s original Six.  McKellen, however, is a delight as Number Two.  He mixes hints of menace with a genteel urbanity that fits the bill nicely.

Rather than being on an island, The Village II is situated in seemingly endless stretches of desert and mountains, rendering attempts at escape equally futile.  The desert shots are magnificent, reminiscent of the vistas in Lawrence of Arabia, and were shot in Namibia in southwest Africa.  The villas in The Village are iconic in their own right, and pains were taken to preserve the interiors in much the same architectural style as the original sets.

The episodes can be a bit frustrating.  The backstory is told piecemeal in a series of very brief and abrupt flashbacks, and the lines between reality and possibly hallucinatory events can be maddening, but this is done to symbolize the confusion and detachment from reality that Six undergoes through the course of his residence in The Village.  Reviewers who have seen the entire span of episodes assure us that the story will be, in fact, complete and self-contained, with most viewers’ questions answered, to one degree or another.

While The Prisoner will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s good to see that the vision of Patrick McGoohan, who sadly passed away in January of 2009 and was not involved in the current project, lives on, presenting a thoughtful look at the problems of contemporary society just as the original series did forty years ago.

Be seeing you!

Complete information on tbe series, including photos, blogs, and episode guides is available on AMC’s Prisoner site.  All 17 original episodes of the 1968 series are available for on-line viewing there, as well.