The Prisoner is a British television series created by Patrick McGoohan, who stars as Number Six, a nameless British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village after resigning from his position. The allegorical plotlines of the series contain elements of science fiction, psychological drama, and spy fiction. It was produced by Everyman Films for distribution by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment.
A single series of 17 episodes was filmed between September 1966 and January 1968, with exterior location filming primarily taking place in the Welsh seaside village of Portmeirion. Interiors were filmed at MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. The series was first broadcast in Canada beginning on 5 September 1967, in the UK on 29 September 1967, and in the United States on 1 June 1968.
Although the show was sold as a thriller in the mould of Danger Man (McGoohan's previous series), The Prisoners surreal and Kafkaesque setting and reflection of concerns of the 1960s counterculture have had a far-reaching influence on popular culture and the series ultimately developed a cult following.
Premise The series follows an unnamed British intelligence agent (played by Patrick McGoohan) who, after abruptly and angrily resigning from his highly sensitive government job, prepares to go on a trip. While packing his luggage, he is rendered unconscious by knockout gas piped into his home in Westminster. Upon waking, he finds himself in a recreation of the interior of his home, located in a mysterious coastal settlement known to its residents as "the Village". The Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides and the sea on the other. The agent is then informed that he will be referred to as "Number Six" instead of by his own name.
In subsequent episodes, Number Six becomes acquainted with the residents, hundreds of people from all walks of life and cultures, all seeming to be peacefully and mostly enjoyably living out their lives. They do not use names, but have been assigned numbers, which, aside from designations such as Two, Three, and Six, give no clue as to their status within the Village. Most are captives, but some are guards. Prisoners, therefore, have no idea whom they can and cannot trust. The protagonist is assigned Number Six but refuses to accept the designation: "I am not a number! I am a free man!"
Although the residents can freely move about the Village, they are constantly under the surveillance of numerous high-tech monitoring systems and cannot leave. Security forces, including a balloon-shaped automaton called Rover, recapture or kill those who attempt to escape.
Number Six is a particularly important target of the constantly changing Number Two, the Village administrator, who acts as an agent for the unseen Number One. Number Two uses techniques such as hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation and forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in an attempt to make Number Six reveal why he resigned from his position. The position of Number Two is assigned to a different person in each episode, with two making repeat appearances. This is assumed to be part of a larger plan to disorient Number Six, but sometimes the change of personnel seems to be the result of the failure of the previous incumbent, whose fate is unknown.
Number Six, distrustful of everyone in the Village, refuses to co-operate or provide the answers they seek. He struggles, usually alone, with various goals, such as determining for which side of the Iron Curtain the Village functions, if either, remaining defiant to its imposed authority, concocting plans for escape, learning all he can about the Village, and subverting its operation. His schemes lead to the dismissals of the incumbent Number Two on several occasions. Despite foiling the system, Number Six never escapes. By the end of the series, the administration, becoming desperate for Number Six's knowledge, as well as fearful of his growing influence in the Village, takes drastic measures that threaten the lives of Number Six, Number Two, and the entire Village.
A major theme of the series is the conflict between individualism, as represented by Number Six, and collectivism, as represented by the Village. According to McGoohan, the series aimed to demonstrate a balance between the two ideologies.
Cast
Main cast
Patrick McGoohan as Number Six
Recurring cast Angelo Muscat as The Butler Peter Swanwick as Supervisor Denis Shaw as The Shop Keeper Fenella Fielding as The Announcer/Telephone Operator (voice only)
Number Two The episodes featured guest stars in the role of Number Two.
Guest cast
Annette Andre Sheila Allen Niké Arrighi Michael Balfour Kenneth Benda Christopher Benjamin Michael Billington Michael Bilton Peter Bowles Angela Browne James Bree Michael Brennan Earl Cameron Annette Carrell John Castle Dennis Chinnery Michael Chow George Coulouris Rosalie Crutchley Finlay Currie Hilary Dwyer Paul Eddington Mark Eden Max Faulkner Ian Fleming Valerie French Nadia Gray Lucy Griffiths John Hamblin Basil Hoskins Peter Howell Patricia Jessel Alf Joint Alexis Kanner Katherine Kath Gertan Klauber Lloyd Lamble Jon Laurimore George Leech Charles Lloyd-Pack Justine Lord Duncan Macrae Victor Maddern Virginia Maskell John Maxim Betty McDowall Jane Merrow Martin Miller Norman Mitchell Aubrey Morris Bartlett Mullins David Nettheim Michael Nightingale Frederick Piper George Pravda Keith Pyott Ronald Radd Hugo Schuster Donald Sinden Patsy Smart Nigel Stock Kevin Stoney Larry Taylor Wanda Ventham Zena Walker Norma West Alan White
McGoohan was the only actor credited during the opening sequence, with Muscat the only actor considered a co-star of the series. Several actors (including Alexis Kanner, Christopher Benjamin and Georgina Cookson) appeared in more than one episode playing different characters. Frank Maher, McGoohan's stunt double, who is seen running across the beach in the title sequence, also appears extensively in "The Schizoid Man" and in "Living in Harmony".
Episodes
The Prisoner consists of 17 episodes, which were first broadcast from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968 in the United Kingdom. While the show was presented as a serialised work, with a clear beginning and end, the ordering of the intermediate episodes is unclear, as the production and original broadcast order were different. Several attempts have been made to create an episode ordering based on script and production notes and interpretations of the broader narrative of Number Six's time in the Village.
Opening and closing sequences The opening and closing sequences of The Prisoner have become iconic, cited as "one of the great set-ups of genre drama", by establishing the Orwellian and postmodern themes of the series. The high production values of the opening sequence have been described as more like those of a feature film than a television programme.
Production Development The Prisoner was created while Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein were working on Danger Man, an espionage show produced by Incorporated Television Company. The exact details of who created which aspects of the show are disputed, as there is no "created by" credit. Majority opinion credits McGoohan as the sole creator of the series, but a disputed co-creator status was later ascribed to Markstein after a series of fan interviews were published in the 1980s.
Some sources indicate that McGoohan was the sole or primary creator of the show. McGoohan stated in a 1977 interview that, during the filming of the third series of Danger Man, he told ITC Entertainment managing director Lew Grade that he wanted to quit working on Danger Man after the filming of the proposed fourth series. Grade was unhappy with the decision, but when McGoohan insisted upon quitting, Grade asked if McGoohan had any other possible projects, and McGoohan later pitched The Prisoner. In a 1988 article in British telefantasy magazine Time Screen, though, McGoohan indicated that he had planned to pitch The Prisoner before speaking with Grade.
In both accounts, McGoohan pitched the idea orally, rather than having Grade read the proposal in detail, and the two made an oral agreement for the show to be produced by Everyman Films, the production company formed by McGoohan and David Tomblin. In the 1977 account, McGoohan said that Grade approved of the show despite not understanding it, whereas, in the 1988 account, Grade expressed clear support for the concept.
Other sources credit Markstein, then a script editor for Danger Man, with a significant or even primary portion of the development of the show. For example, Dave Rogers, in the book The Prisoner and Danger Man, said that Markstein claimed to have created the concept first and McGoohan later attempted to take credit for it, although Rogers himself doubted that McGoohan would have wanted or needed to do that.
In 1967, a four-page document, generally agreed to have been written by Markstein, setting out an overview of the themes of the series, was published as part of an ITC/ATV press book. It has usually been accepted that this text originated earlier as a guide for the series writers. Further doubt has been cast on Markstein's version of events by author Rupert Booth in his biography of McGoohan, entitled Not a Number. Booth points out that McGoohan had outlined the themes of The Prisoner in a 1965 interview, long before Markstein's tenure as script editor on the brief fourth series of Danger Man.
Part of Markstein's inspiration came from his research into the Second World War, where he found that some people had been incarcerated in a resort-like prison in Scotland called Inverlair Lodge, near Inverness. Markstein suggested that Danger Mans main character John Drake (played by McGoohan) could suddenly resign and be kidnapped and sent to such a location. McGoohan added Markstein's suggestion to material he had been working on, which later became The Prisoner. A 1960 episode of Danger Man entitled "View from the Villa" had exteriors filmed in Portmeirion, a Welsh resort village that struck McGoohan as a good location for future projects.
According to "Fantasy or Reality"—a chapter of The Prisoner of Portmeirion—the Village is based, in part, on "a strange place in Scotland" operated by the Inter-Services Research Bureau, wherein "people" with "valuable knowledge of one sort or another" were held prisoners on extended "holidays" in a "luxury prison camp". The Prisoners story editor, George Markstein, this source contends, knows of "the existence of this 'secure establishment. This "Scottish prison camp, in reality, was not, of course, a holiday-type village full of people wearing colourful clothing."
Further inspiration came from a Danger Man episode called "Colony Three", in which Drake infiltrates a spy school in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The school, in the middle of nowhere, is set up to look like a normal English town in which pupils and instructors mix as in any other normal city, but the instructors are virtual prisoners with little hope of ever leaving. McGoohan also stated that he was influenced by his experience from theatre, including his work in the Orson Welles play Moby Dick—Rehearsed (1955) and in a BBC television play, The Prisoner by Bridget Boland.