The Prisoner: A Televisionary Masterpiece

The Internet has mainly made this sort of book obsolete; and as an early example of the type (1989), there are some instances where the delivery is a bit flawed - the episode summaries, for instance, lack the sort of analysis and insight that many later fan/professional crossover works for other shows offer. There are also fairly gross production errors - sentences or blocks of text either missing or duplicated.

But there is interesting detail of the actual production process, such as the division of filming for blocks of episodes between Portmeirion and the studio; and the background to the show's genesis, coming out of the earlier Danger Man* series, is illuminating. It was never directly stated that The Prisoner was a direct sequel show more to Danger Man, but it seems that everyone connected with the shows, including Patrick McGoohan himself, worked on that assumption. The show certainly started out as a thematic sequel, putting a prime-time family entertainment spy story on tv screens; but as time went by, McGoohan pushed the allegorical and philosophical sides of the show further into the foreground.

The show was actually cancelled as from episode 13, but for contractual reasons four more episodes were commissioned, including McGoohan's controversial final episodes, Once Upon a Time and Fall Out. In retrospect, revealing Number One to be some fiendish James Bond-style villain who we had never previously seen would have been a cop-out. Number One had to be someone closely connected with the story of the Prisoner himself; ultimately, finding out that Number Six's captor is Number Six is the only possible ending.

*Secret Agent in the USA. show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1217101.html

I'm still looking for the perfect book about The Prisoner, but this is not bad at all: originally published in French (but translated fairly smoothly) it includes the usual episode guide, but lavishly illustrated and recounting each plot in great detail; it has one thing I really did want, a narrative of the production history (which puts script editor George Marksteiner's side of the story as well as McGoohan's version of events); and also a fascinating interview with McGoohan, where he says that actually he would have been happy if only seven episodes had been made; there are only seven that he finds true to the concept and the rest are padding. (We may now try and identify which they were.) show more Recommended. show less