The Prisoner viewing diary

With this sixties British cult classic, I faced an unusual dilemma: despite a clear (arguably) beginning and end, The Prisoner has no one proper viewing order. I chose to follow one fan's particular preference and spoke to him afterward about why he chose this line-up as a guideline (as described in my introduction). This was my first experience of the series, composing my reaction to each episode soon after watching.

The Prisoner - Final Conclusions w/ Christopher Yohn

Eight months ago I finished The Prisoner, a cult British show from 1967 - 68. I followed up my viewing diary by talking to a couple big fans but right around then my blogging activity came to a grinding halt (I never even published the second conversation until months later). I always hoped to share a concluding entry, less for my own thoughts (most of what I have to say on The Prisoner has been said) than for further input from Christopher Yohn. He designed the viewing order I used to watch these notoriously difficult-to-organize episodes, and below he explains his reasoning in detail.

I thank him and others who encouraged and aided this endeavor. This was only the second TV series I wrote about during a first viewing, an exciting, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants approach. The Prisoner itself was a delight, perfectly balancing thought-provoking and (surprisingly) light-hearted moments. Is that an appropriate description of a series with such a deeply engaged and uncompromising philosophical outlook? With its air of play and amusement, I think so - certainly the show's colorful aesthetic and zippy sixties style were quite refreshing to me last year. I know when I eventually return to the series it will nostalgically take me back to the winter and spring when I first watched, discussed, and eventually read (and listened to podcasts, and watched videos) about The Prisoner. It already seems quite long ago, across the much-bemoaned chasm that was 2016, but I remember it fondly.

I don't have anything deeper to say at the moment. Perhaps someday, when I inevitably try out a different viewing order, I will offer some more observations. Until then: Be se...

Well, I don't really need to say it again, do I?

The Prisoner: conversation w/ James Cooray Smith

As I'm sure you've noted, things have been pretty quiet around here lately. Since I announced that I was slowing down my pace back in April, I've published just three video essays (all created within a few weeks of that announcement), two podcast appearance, and an interview. Several items have continued to linger in my backlog all this time, while other projects remained unfinished. But nothing else has lingered as unjustifiably as this interview, and no project has been left hanging more egregiously than my Prisoner series of which this is a part. In April, James Cooray Smith took the time to chat with me about the TV series and unfortunately the conversation fell by the wayside...until now. I'm thrilled to finally publish our talk here, full of fascinating history about The Prisoner, exchanges about its meaning and effectiveness, and the recounting of James' own experience with the show.

James is a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction, with a particular focus on both cinema and television (he has published critical biographies of film directors like Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, and George Lucas). He is also a columnist for the New Statesman, which is how I first came across his work: last December, he authored the provocatively-titled (albeit not by him) "There is no way Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be as good as the prequels", which mentioned my video series Journey Through Twin Peaks. We struck up a Twitter acquaintance, and as I began covering The Prisoner - one of his all-time favorite TV shows - he dropped by regularly to comment, often leaving long, thoughtful addenda to my own instant reactions. I eagerly looked forward to discussing the series with him (among other things, I knew he was a passionate defender of "The Girl Who Was Death"), but since then I've been rather selfish, keeping the conversation to myself. No longer.

Great thanks to James for his generosity and patience, and apologies for making him - and you - wait so long for his lucid insights. On with the show...

The Prisoner: A Conversation with Christopher Yohn

Now begins the final stretch of my Prisoner series, which I have really been looking forward to. With the viewing diary completed, I am initiating a series of discussions with some of the veteran viewers who have been following along. I will also be reading about The Prisoner, watching ancillary materials, listening to podcasts, and doing all the activities I avoided during my watch-through so as to preserve the freshness of the experience. However, this conversation with Christopher Yohn was conducted a few hours after watching and reviewing the finale for the first time. So at this point I still didn't have much context for anything, and was looking for...information.

Chris was happy to oblige, providing not only a wider context but his own personal perspective, as well as (drumroll, please...) the explanation for his viewing order, which I have used for the series. That said, we left a lot of stuff off the table for now, because we're planning a second discussion in about a month, to conclude this series once and for all. Until then, there was plenty for us to discuss, and for me to learn. We spoke via chat and I mostly left the conversation formatted as it was to indicate pauses and groups of thoughts. Thanks to Chris for offering a huge hand with the editing of the text. Now, without further ado, starting with the most important question of all...

The Prisoner - "Fall Out"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Well, I was right about "Dem Bones" (was I ever). If the episode has a theme song, that non sequitur novelty is it, with the Beatles' then-recent "All You Need is Love" coming in a close, ahem, number two. I had a feeling I'd heard about this before but wasn't sure if I was confusing it with The Singing Detective (which also uses the song, likely in tribute). And there it is, when Number Forty-eight (Alexis Kanner, the deranged mute deputy in "Living in Harmony", now recast as an all-purpose youthful rebel) appears at the hybrid trial/coronation/info-dump where Six is sent after defeating Number Two in the previous episode. Forty-eight's anarchic ditty soon spreads to the entire masked and cloaked delegation ostensibly there to judge him, and as they chant and sway a cheerful, swingin' Pop version of the theme emerges on the soundtrack. This same recording reappears at least three or four more times, jauntily sneering at us in our search for meaning while - if we have good humor - making us grin ear to ear. It's all a big joke, right? Right? Well...this particular recording may be a novelty, but the song itself isn't actually a non sequitur. The lyrics are based on a passage from the Book of Ezekial in which the resurrection of a defeated Israel is prophesied via the metaphor of dry bones found in the desert reattaching themselves to one another, and rising from the dust. The song was written in 1927, via a sermon delivered by the preacher J.M. Gates (who expanded Ezekial's one line about connecting bones to cover the entire human anatomy in a rolling, building catalog) to which music was added by James Weldon Johnson (or his brother), who in addition to being a notable figure in the Harlem Renaissance was the leader of the NAACP at the time of writing. By 1967, the song was perhaps mostly familiar - especially to UK audiences - as a meaningless ditty sung to pass the time.

So which is it? A sly nod to a long history of defiance and revolution? Or a cheeky paeon to individual resistance as little more than sideshow treadmill? There's the crux of The Prisoner's ambiguity, and particularly this final episode's.

The Prisoner - "Once Upon a Time"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

I knew a couple things going in. One, I knew this was by general agreement the penultimate episode. Two, I knew...well, I knew Two - specifically that Leo McKern would return to play him. First the episode order. No listing I've seen has placed this anywhere else (although its shooting order and production code - whatever that is - were sixth and thirteenth according to Wikipedia). So clearly something important was going to happen in "Once Upon a Time." And indeed, at the end of the episode Number Six asks be taken to see Number One and apparently gets his wish. That would be pretty hard to slot elsewhere in the lineup, especially if the finale does indeed begin with Six meeting One. As for Number Two, while I knew about McKern's casting I wasn't sure how it would be handled onscreen. To my mild surprise, it was fully acknowledged. "I know you," Six remarks on hearing Two's voice, and to both his superiors (over the phone) and to Six, Two says, "I've been here before." This in itself is an anomaly; every episode is usually careful not to reference the events of others (although the earlier repeat Two appearance edges pretty close to this line). While both of these facts are small, they - especially the first - affected my attitude going in. I wonder if I would have experienced "Once Upon a Time" as something more routine had its placement been more random, or if I would have sensed something afoot right away. In other words, was the episode's unique quality in my own head or inherent in the material? I'm not sure, and that uncertainty is indicative of the episode as a whole. This is a thoroughly strange fifty minutes, fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. It's pretty brilliant, and I'm not sure I liked it. The episode crawls inside your head and insinuates itself in your consciousness, appropriately for a show about brainwashing.

The Prisoner - "The Girl Who Was Death"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Well, this one was a whole lot of fun. I was initially nervous - the first thing I ever heard was, "I don't envy you having to watch 'The Girl Who Was Death.'" Then I was excited, because the next thing I heard was, "This is one of my favorite episodes of television ever." Whether or not the episode would be good or bad, I knew it would definitely be interesting. In that sense, it didn't disappoint although I completely understand why people would be turned off. It's ridiculous, silly, and flamboyantly irrelevant to the overall series, taking the challenge of creating a filler episode as an excuse to completely cut loose. There are Indiana Jones-esque booby traps, absurd disguises that would make Windom Earle blush, about a dozen and a half "villain gives hero opportunity to escape" tropes, and a goofy, gleefully dated uber-sixties style with lots of zooms and quick cuts and zany camera tricks. The whole episode takes place not only outside of the Village but without the slightest reference to it (until the end). As if to further thumb its nose at an audience irritated with this diversion, it frames the entire story as a tall tale "read" to children into a nursery. Like "Living in Harmony," "The Girl Who Was Death" flirts with creating an episode that exists in isolation from the rest of the series only to eventually contextualize it as a spin-off of the main thread (using those cute page flips interspersed throughout to tip its hand). We discover that characters we met within the story are actually authorities in the Village, as the old Wizard of Oz "and you were there, and you were there..." trick retains its charm. I can't call this my favorite episode of The Prisoner (let alone of television) nor can I dismiss it as the worst of the show or deny its delightfulness. Will it hold up on further viewings? Maybe, maybe not, but my first experience with it went well.

The Prisoner - "Hammer into Anvil"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

After a ridiculously elaborate set-up last week, we're back to simplicity with "Hammer into Anvil." In fact, this is one of the cleanest, most straightforward scenarios of any Prisoner episode, a battle of wills and wits. In one corner is Number Six, of course, and in the other is Number Two (Patrick Cargill), who has never seemed more sniveling yet sinister. I thought Cargill looked familiar - presumably as the heavy in some British film from the sixties or seventies - but scrolling through his Wikipedia page I didn't recognize any of his other roles...at first. As it turns out, he was already in The Prisoner! Apparently he was "a colleague from Number Six's pre-Village days" in "Many Happy Returns." I checked up and sure enough, that's him although oddly enough he looks somewhat older and more sedate (if still with a touch of the saucy sneer). I don't suppose these are intended as the same characters although given The Prisoner's playful ambiguity, who knows ("Many Happy Returns" also features another repeat actor, the woman who plays Number Two - so in both cases repeat guests are cast as Two). In Six's eyes, Two may not be familiar, but he is fleeting, wryly observing Two's discomfort with his own superiors, and noting that other Twos have tried - and failed - to break him. This is an episode that both benefits and suffers from a late placement in the viewing order. On the one hand, we've seen so many Number Twos come and go that the fragility of his position comes as no surprise. On the other hand...we've seen so many Number Twos come and go that this very lack of surprise hinders the drama. For that reason, and because of how Two is scripted, the confrontation doesn't seem evenly matched.

The Prisoner - "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

I have only been warned about two episodes of The Prisoner - and this is one of them (the other is still to come). As it turns out, I can see why...but I still enjoyed watching this. I got a kick out of the conceit, contrived as it was, and was curious to see where it would go. Given my viewing order, which seemed constructed to taper off before the big climax, I was also surprised to see an episode this conceptually ambitious and ranging so far afield. Granted, its concept is kind of screwy on several levels. The series has flirted with cheesy sci-fi shenanigans several times but this is probably the only occasion where it really does go over the line. In previous outings, say "The Schizoid Man," the theme always seemed to lead the gimmick. In "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" the gimmick is definitely punching above its weight. Above all, the convenience of the episode's device is pretty transparent. I was going to joke that perhaps McGoohan had pneumonia when this one was written and shot, but I stumbled across the real reason for his notable absence while looking up casting details. Apparently, he was off shooting a film, leaving the writers with the nearly impossible task of crafting a chapter of The Prisoner in which the central, title character, the only even vaguely consistent member of the cast, would be reduced to one scene and a few lines of dialogue. Given the absurdity of that challenge, I'd say they pulled it off as best they could. If you take this in the right spirit - I laughed out loud when I realized where this was going (and surmised why it was going there) - "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" is a bit of fun.

The Prisoner - "A Change of Mind"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Here we finally reach an episode which doesn't attempt to out-do the previous ones in terms of its high concept. This might be the first since "Checkmate" to take a fairly straightforward approach to the goings-on of the Village, without any grand escape attempts, massive twists, or unconventional premises. With that in mind, it's a relief that the episode feels so solid (though I've had some warnings about two of the next three, so I shouldn't breathe too easy yet). With a let's-break-Six-inside-the-community conceit that recalls "The Schizoid Man" and "A., B., and C." but without the cleverness of either, "A Change of Mind" is about as close to a filler episode as I've seen so far on The Prisoner. As such, it hones in on the core hook of the series: the notion that Six needs to maintain his independence and self-awareness in the face of the authorities' challenges to his autonomy. And it reminds us that his "superiors" have limited power. For whatever reason, they don't actually want to overtly manipulate him - even while they want him to think they have that power.

The Prisoner - "Living in Harmony"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

This is probably the least successful episode so far for me, yet it's also one of the most interesting. Every week I say "The Prisoner couldn't possibly stretch its conceit any further" before being surprised. At the risk of going out on a limb, however, it's hard to imagine any future chapters (aside from the gloves-off finales) taking a bolder approach than this. Of course, how much can you twist the show's basic premise without venturing into decadence? I spent about as much of "Living in Harmony" admiring its cleverness and enjoying its eccentricities (and this is a very eccentric episode) as I did frustrated by the moments that lapsed into self-parody and bizarre-for-bizarre's sake mannerisms. At one point, when the mute outlaw/deputy "The Kid" (Alex Kanner) started performing some sort of drunken avant-garde dance with his pistol I decided I was just going to go along for the ride without asking too many questions, but that wasn't always easy. I guess I should dive right into the big twist... When "Living in Harmony" begins, it follows the structure of the usual opening shots pretty closely. But instead of riding in a sports car, Number Six is on a horse. He's crossing the prairie, not the busy streets of swingin' London. Instead of pounding a table in a sleek, modern office and turning in his resignation he throws a sheriff's badge on a U.S. marshal's wooden desk. "Living in Harmony" is a Western.

The Prisoner - "It's Your Funeral"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

The Prisoner is something of a high-wire act. Its parameters seem so clear, the risks so high, that at any given moment you expect it to fail spectacularly. "It's Your Funeral" is a perfect example of this. After the previous nine episodes, it seems increasingly difficult to imagine where the show could go next without either repeating or overextending itself. At first, the episode seems to tread on the latter territory. Despite the creativity of focusing on the authorities' point of view - something we've humored before but never to this extent (we even get a glimpse of the daily mechanisms of the Village bureaucracy)  - at a certain point this maneuver feels a bit forced. We watch Number Two (Derren Nesbitt), this time a somewhat prissy and smug blonde youth, manipulate Number Six into thinking there's a plot against him (meaning against Number Two). Initially clever, within a few scenes this device seems a little tired. We've already viewed these officials toy with Six so many times that it feels like finally the show may have fallen a bit flat in its conceits. Ho hum, so Two will convince Six there's an assassination conspiracy, and then convince him that he's crazy for thinking this and oh, who cares really? But then the episode reveals its ace in the hole: on the day Two is to be assassinated, Six goes to visit Two to warn him again - only to be told that he's a "jammer," someone who creates so many false-flag rebellions against the governing class that he's considered a boy who cried wolf. So far, so predictable: their goal is to mess with Six's mind, right? Well, no. Over half an hour into "It's Your Funeral" we discover the twist: the actual Number Two, the one who is at risk of being killed is someone completely different, an older man (Andre van Gyseghem) who is actually passing the official role on to the Two we met earlier. Six, at this point, is little more than a pawn in their game - with the new Two's goal to execute the old Two. Why? Well, we don't really know. Perhaps because, as Six archly puts it, "they're trying save a pension."

The Prisoner - "Many Happy Returns"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Week by week, it's amusing to look back on where I thought future episodes might go. I certainly didn't expect "Many Happy Returns" to call the bluff of "The Chimes of Big Ben" or "A, B, and C" by all-out allowing Number Six to escape, allowing him to get all the way to London (!), and even to explain the Village to his superiors and launch an investigation into its whereabouts (!!). And this being a middle episode of The Prisoner (a category that I guess describes everything from 2 to 15), naturally that investigation leads right back to him being stranded on the island again - and we do at least learn this time that the Village is on an island. This is a great episode, maybe my favorite of the series so far. Not only is its narrative conceit bold - hilariously bold, even - it also has the courage to tell nearly half of its story without a single word of dialogue. It's sixteen minutes before we hear any speech at all. Twenty-two minutes in, Six speaks his first line of dialogue ("Where is this?"). Twenty-eight minutes through the episode (more than halfway) Six finally speaks to another person who understands him. As a result, we get pure visual storytelling for a substantial chunk of the episode; it's another feather in The Prisoner's cap as it finds new ways to expand on and play with its concept episode by episode.

The Prisoner - "A, B, and C"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

"A, B, and C" is full of surprises and new directions. This in itself is - somewhat paradoxically - unsurprising, because I haven't encountered any "filler" episodes yet (and if I did, they were early enough in the order not to strike me as such). With every entry, The Prisoner seems to find a new way to twist its premise and discover new alcoves and corridors within its terrain, even as it uses elements introduced in other episodes. "The Chimes of Big Ben" cleverly allowed Number Six outside of the Village - to a point. "The Schizoid Man" forced Six to wrestle with his own identity, as the authorities manipulated his reality. "The General" used technology to dominate Six (and other Villagers), until his own ingenuity destroyed the power of the machine. "A, B, and C" incorporates all of these approaches, while also utilizing the "tell us why you defected" obsession of "Big Ben" and actually continuing with the same Number Two for the first time (Colin Gordon, who also appeared in last week's entry, "The General"). One twist is that Six isn't really outside of the Village, but simply experiencing computerized hallucinations in which Number Two and Number Fourteen (Sheila Allen) use avatars to prove that Two betrayed the Agency before resigning (or was planning to betray them afterwards?). Another twist is that Six is able to achieve his most dramatic, table-turning victory yet perhaps because escape is never even his goal, but also because Two is under such intense pressure to discover Six's secrets.

The Prisoner - "The General"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

I'm trying to avoid too many conversations about The Prisoner until I complete the series (at which point I'm planning to devote about a month to weekly chats with the show's fans). However, I did mention "The General" recently with Bob Clark, who will be one of the conversants. He said that this was one of his favorite episodes and then made an interesting observation: "I really like the ones that aren't really about him trying to escape, but him essentially righting a wrong in the Village. Makes a great use of the setting, turning it into a place where any kind of crazy spy thing can happen." This is, I think, a useful distinction. Of course every episode I've seen so far incorporates Number Six's desire to flee the Village alongside some effort to understand and/or subvert the Village's rules. Nevertheless, there are strong variations in the emphasis. "The Chimes of Big Ben," for example was very thoroughly escape-driven, taking an extended close look at the mechanics of Six's elaborate plan (and the even more elaborate plan to deceive him). "Free for All" on the other hand was far more concerned with how the Village functions than how Six could get away from it - although both "Free for All" and "The Schizoid Man" put Six in a mostly reactive rather than proactive position. "The General" may be the most active Six has been in an episode not devoted to his escape attempt.

The Prisoner - "The Schizoid Man"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Number Six really is Number Six, but they want him to think he is Number Twelve, supposedly in order to trick Number Six (who is actually Number Twelve, and who has been assigned to trick the real Number Six) but actually in order to confuse and break Number Six, the real Number Six that is. Got that? Actually the concept plays much smoother than it sounds: we're always pretty clear on which Number Six is really Number Six, with just the right dash of is-he-or-isn't-he thrown into the mix. This is partly achieved by the obvious method of giving real Number Six (fake Number Twelve) a black jacket, and real Number Twelve (fake Number Six) a white one. But it is also accomplished more subtly through McGoohan's performance, which is rather a masterstroke given how many levels it plays at once. Number Twelve (the fake Number...well, hopefully by this point you've got the hang of it) is almost too confident, brash, and authoritative. This makes him less sympathetic, for one thing, and clearly distinguishes him from the real Number Six, whose very human perplexity serves as a suitable audience surrogate. Such a gesture could seem a tad obvious unless we recall just how arrogant Six can be at times (for which he paid a price in "Checkmate" - one reason this episode order has worked well for me so far). In a way, this plays almost like Number Six being forced to confront his own dark side: the same overconfidence that can sometimes be his undoing is now turned on himself.

The Prisoner - "The Chimes of Big Ben"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Here we have a very, very unusual episode. Let me count the ways... Number Two (Leo McKern) seems less confident than usual; he even loses his temper and grows flustered at times. His blustering threats against Number Six seem vaguely out of character, even for a character who's actually a different character each time. While every episode begins with the new Number Two's vague demand for "information," "The Chimes of Big Ben" gets very specific about what information the authorities are looking for: they want to know why Number Six resigned. Number Two goes so far as to say that is all they want to know. This is a rather startling alteration, because it makes Six's situation seem less like a mindfuck limbo and more like a straightforward moral challenge. Something else is more straightforward too: the political stakes of the Village, perhaps even its location, are explicitly - if somewhat confusingly - laid out by the characters onscreen. Number Six is told by Natasha (Nadia Gray), the new Number Eight (have we met the old Number Eight?) that the Village is in Lithuania and together they are even able to chart an escape back to London. It seems very much to be a Cold War situation, with the Soviets trying to extract information from a British agent. Or is this a red herring?

The Prisoner - "Checkmate"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

As I watch The Prisoner for the first time in 2016, I am struck by how unflappable and strong-willed Number Six is. Today's media landscape tend to prefer ambiguous antiheroes or more sensitive self-questioning protagonists but Six is very much an assertive, unapologetic Cold War-era British alpha male. His suave but still relatively square demeanor and arch sense of humor reminds me of Sean Connery's James Bond (although Six doesn't quite seem to be having as much fun as 007 - maybe that extra digit makes all the difference). This marks him out not only from later trends in pop culture, but also his environment on the show itself - where most of the other Villagers appear meek or voiceless, either placidly accepting their condition or actively working to perpetuate it. Reflecting on this quality in "Checkmate," I was pleasantly surprised to see that the episode itself actually incorporates this discrepancy into the plot: Six's take-control, unintimidated nature sabotages his escape attempt when it convinces his collaborators he is actually a mole. Six's greatest virtues are his intelligence and his stubborn will but this time at least they work at cross-purposes. In an episode that centers - none to subtly - around the metaphor of chess, his claim that "good old-fashioned brute force can be very effective" seems to be disproved by the outcome.

The Prisoner - "Free for All"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

The last episode presented the world of The Prisoner as a cheerful totalitarian state in which it was impossible to tell the prisoners from the wardens. "Free for All" certainly doesn't run from that sense, but it amplifies it by presenting the Village as a sham democracy too. With an election approaching, Number Six is invited, encouraged in fact, to run for for the position "Number Two." Of course he has his usual headstrong plan: if he is voted in he will rip the facade from the community, discover which prisoners are biding their time until they can escape, and lead all of them to liberation. He might also get to meet the mysterious Number One and find out what's really going on. Needless to say, it doesn't work that way. The current Number Two (or is he?) (Eric Portman) stands by placidly while Six makes his incendiary speech but soon he is responding to each twitch of thought or pang of conscience with a round of brainwashing. On the previous episode, it was said that Six should not be so overtly manipulated, that he must come to provide information and accept the Village's authority of his own accord. There are no such qualms this time. Six is subjected to an ingeniously conveyed mental torture (with silhouettes of a square and circle entering the silhouette of his profile), plied with spiked drinks, and otherwise manipulated into being a grimacing tool of the establishment. This feels like the most cynical episode I've watched so far, and maybe the most hopeless.

The Prisoner - "Dance of the Dead"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

It's Carnival Day in the Village and the idea seems perfectly suited for the bright, cheerful community. In theory, that is - in practice it means dozens of people in colorful costumes standing around aimlessly until they are told what to do (in this case, dance). If the first episode focused my attention on the mystery of the Village itself, this - the eighth episode aired and (on the advice of Christopher Yohn and others) the second I have watched - awoke my curiosity about the Villagers themselves. Who are they? How did they get there? Why do they do what they do (or don't do)? Are they like Number Six, desiring escape but having learned to bide their time until the right opportunity arrives? Or have the pleasant repetitions of the daily routine, the hospitalizations and other medical intervention ordered by the Doctor (William Lyon Brown), and the fear of violent reprisal effectively brainwashed these people? We get a variety of answers in "Dance of the Dead," but no definite conclusions.