AMC remake brilliant or just another rotten cabbage? The Original Prisoner about to get his makeover (update: Nov 11, 2009)
As a child, I was sent to bed at an hour when the tv programs turned towards adult matters. In my case, this would be those 70′s tv detective shows (i.e. Cannon, Columbo, Harry-O, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O). I loved Cannon best. Big fat dude who always delivers a crippling karate chop to his detractors the moment they threaten him with “listen fat man….I don’t like you sniffing around here- OOF!” It didn’t help he had a face of a bulldog.
Sandwiched between these Quinn Martin productions was a murky footage of some solitary man running through a beach at low-tide, being chased by a big white balloon.
“I HATE this show!” my dad would issue from the couch as I hid at the last step to the second floor where my bedroom was, stealing a peek from the shadows, hoping he won’t get up to change to the only other channel. “You can’t make heads or tails of it!”
How could I ever know – at the tender age of 7- that the series that elicited such venom from my guardians would be the most glorious cornerstone, the turning point, the bulwark that reinforced my sense of self!?
Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein’s The Prisoner spanned 17 episodes in 6 months from 1967-1968. In my young adult years, The Prisoner preceded my love of Jorge Luis Borges – creating a sense of meeting an old friend again- the day I would finish reading “The Circular Ruins.”
McGoohan’s masterpiece centers around a secret agent who resigns his post. When he is in the midst of leaving for a long vacation, he is kidnapped to an undisclosed village and assigned a number. For the duration of the 17 episode serial, No. 6 pits his indefatigable willpower against his captors to escape the village. His wardens go through a battery of tactics to break him in order to discover the reasons behind his early retirement. No.6 foils their plans on some episodes while they get the upper hand on others. There’s never a moment the Prisoner gives in to the pressure of his peers.
Never broken, always focused on freedom, No.6 and the Prisoner fortified a strong sense of self and identity within me. In the days of punk rock, it showed me that one could, indeed be a full out rebel while having a neat haircut and wearing pressed trousers and boat shoes: it had nothing to do with the Doc Martens, the mohawks, or the spiked collars, it was all about the strength of your inner voice and your willingness to listen to it. Certainly, it paved a solid surface for my road to a stalwart trans-identity.
Not only did The Prisoner alluded to the increasingly claustrophobic domain of modern technology, it was social satire and a grand allegory to conformity and the loss of the self.
In the 80s, I considered joining the Prisoner fan club known as the Six of One Society. Deep down however, a part of me questioned the notion of a club who shared the same fandom, worshipped the same idol – McGoohan in this case – and got together in Portmeiron, Wales each year to celebrate a similar interest, reenact Prisoner scenes, dress like Prisoner villagers, and discuss all things Prisoner.
That part of me asked, “wasn’t this exactly the sort of conformity that No. 6 himself was rebelling against? Wasn’t this the loss of individuality that McGoohan was shedding light on?”
Luckily, there’s someone who can say it better than me. Chris Gregory, the author of Be Seeing You: Decoding the Prisoner has provided an insightful essay to this tv classic: on his website From The Pen of Chris Gregory. AMC is showing the premier of their entire 6 episode mini-series remake of McGoohan’s original gem on November 15 – 17 Sunday 8pm. I have wanted a Prisoner book for years, and now I am going to buy Gregory’s book with the last penny to my name.
Prep yourself properly and go the Chris’s site and have a look around before Sunday. Be seeing you!
James Caviezel as the new Prisoner. I sense trouble already. Way too hunky to focus on idealogy and parables.
