Any PRISONER fans out there?Ive loved this show since i first watched it in the late 60s and must admit it seems as relevant today as it did then,have collected alot of stuff on the making of this series over the years and would love to chat to fellow fans.

I love this show. One of my favorite things is that it consistently trips me out. I don't watch my DVDs of it often enough to always remember what mindfuck is going on from episode to episode so it's always surprising.

I borrowed some of the tapes from the library. I loved the little village, it was adorable. Last year a friend invited a bunch of us to her cottage in Wasaga Beach and the town looked totally like the village---you drive in and there are these little signs with arrows bank---liquor store---park---ice cream store etc. It was hilarious. I turned to a friend of mine who has the tapes and I said look, we're in the village! It was quite fun.

I do enjoy The Prisoner. Last year, one of our local PBS stations (KTEH, for any of you SF Bay Area people) was showing them with these really amusing campy intros and outros taped by a local television reviewer (Scott Apel, I think his name was). My favorite episode was Hammer into Anvil.

Hey, Smeg! I'm an SF/Bay Area denizen. I totally dug the KTEH showings!

Back in the late 70s- early 80s, they used to show The Prisoner on KQED in SF (KTEH is a San Jose station, for those of you keeping score at home).

KQED had mini-intros done by, well, I don't remember, really. They weren't campy. But, very informative. They would also do a call-in panel after the shows so folks could share observations & ask questions.

I remember the KTEH showings as well (from the late '80s). VERY campy, but I was too young at the time to pick up on that. My parents also visited the resort in Wales where it was filmed and brought back a No. 6 pin for me.

Try reading the Rules/FAQ next time. I don't have time to baby sit your posts.
Be seeing you.

Ahh, the Prisoner, an ITC series for pretentious people. I'm deeply suspicious of claims of profundity for a series whose star buggers off to America for episodes, to make Ice. Station. Zebra.

I never found it pretentious, but I can see how you might. I wish I could remember what I was watching the other day where someone was being chased by a red ball, but my first thought was "Rover!"

Maybe pretentious is not the right word, but I do recall after hearing about it for years, when I finally saw the series my first reaction was "That's it?"

It didn't help that the first episode I saw was The General, and when it had it's terribly profound ending of the question 'Why?' causing the computer to go haywire, I was left wondering why the computer didn't just say 'syntax error' and get on with the brainwashing.

I can understand that. I had a similar reaction to seeing original Battlestar Galactica. But maybe you just have to have a love of all things mod. Like for instance The Final Programme. But I digress.

My biggest issue with The Prisoner when I first saw it was the silly giant white balloon of doom. I still laugh at it. But there's so much other goodness to make up for one outdated effect!

BBCAmerica will be airing the Prisoner weekly starting this friday at 10 (along with the Avengers and the Saint). I am very excited.

According to legend, Rover was initially supposed to be a super-machine with tentacles & all kindsa cool stuff. But, the budget wouldn't allow it.

So, they got a weather balloon & tried to make it "creepy".

Oh!, the Ballooon of Doom was one of the coolest parts. It enhanced the subversive and surreal quality of the show by being what it didn't look like. What could be more harmless than a balloon...until you saw Rover engulf and kill an escapee. The Prisoner and the Avengers were the two coolest shows of my youth. ...I'm permanently scarred; vintage English sports cars, bowler hats, sword umbrellas and English tailored suits.

I'm just bitter that I don't get BBC-America. They're running the Avengers, the Prisoner and the Saint this summer. And I'm missing it!

I loved getting the box set and seeing Living in Harmony, the episode where it's Patrick McGoohan in a western somewhat similar to The Prisoner and you have no idea what the hell is going on the first time you see it. The episode was also responsible for one of the most shameless, bald-faced lies in tv history, when the American stations refused to air it claiming that the hallucinogenic drugs were the reason, when they had no problem airing episodes like A, B, and C.

A, B, and C andLiving in Harmony are my two favorite episodes. The first one because parties certainly seemed to get duller after the sophisticated sixties gave way to the suburban seventies. The second one because there's no way it can be mistaken for anything other than an episode of The Prisoner no matter how western it looks.

Best episode title though is Many Happy Returns.

I'd been hearing about this show for a while, so I was thrilled to see that BBC America is showing it. Now that I've seen it...well, let's just say that if I did a shot everytime I thought "the hell?" or "WTF?", I'd been needing medical care.

I love it, though, in all of its campy glory. I can't say which I like more: the fashions (I must get one of those multi-colored capes!), various background things going on in number 2's dome, or the weather balloon of death! And, most importantly, the entire concept of the series is explained in the opening credits. I love that!

I missed the first episode and wondered if I'd be able to follow the show. Then I saw the credits and could figure everything out.

Man, this is one weirdass show.

17 episodes that make you wonder exactly who Mr. McGoohan's dealer was.

I wish I had access to my copy of "The Prisoner Companion" because it has a list of all of Patrick McGoohan's pseudonyms. He wrote about half the series and directed a good third of it. It's an extremely personal work.

I had the thought during the last episode that it's interesting that they made the main character so damned unlikeable. (I believe my exact words were, "David Chase ain't got nothing on the creator of this show.") Now I find out it was McGoohan. Interesting...

I'd bet all of my worldly possessions that there was some serious drug use going on there.

Interesting, tortuga. Please elaborate.

I really liked those two guys who manned the two boom cameras in the secret hidey-out. I hope they didn't get motion sickness.

I can't think of anything in particular right now that made me dislike number 6 so much. It was basically a general feeling that if he were to be eaten by one of the balloons, I wouldn't be sad.

Maybe because he really wasn't very rounded? Apart from Hammer Into Anvil, where he avenged the death of the girl who committed suicide by giving the Number 2 of the week a nervous breakdown, he never really seemed to care about anything except escaping from the Village. When he interacted with the other prisoners? Part of a plan to escape. When he did some light reading? Part of a plan to escape. When he bought a whole shelf load of battenburg cake? Part of a plan to escape. I get that he's indominitable, but would it kill him just once to take a time out?

And then there's that stupid martial art he used to do on trampolines...

Hee hee! The trampolines with the hot tub in between? Always good for a laugh.

I just got into this show (and The Avengers) with BBC America, and I have to say, I love it I love it I love it. And weirdly enough, I don't find it dated, at all. Some fight scenes aside (okay, so not "at all", but close enough), it still holds up incredibly well. And I agree that Number 6. was, for the most part, unlikable; it's just that the situation was so crappy (although it could be worse; he could be on Battle Royale's "The Program" that I just can't help but cheer him on.

And yes, the theme song is the shit. All that introduction for two characters (and one premise).

You know, The Village was surprisingly well ordered, what with them changing Number 2s every week. Makes me wonder why we haven't tried that system yet. Couldn't hurt.

I love the theme tune.

The first programme in my youth that made me realise there was more than kid's telly. Loved it to bits and still do. My youthful obsession has lead me to owning about 7 or 8 books about the series and every ep on video and DVD. I'll probably buy the new box set as well, completist that I am.

Leo McKern was the best Number Two and featured in the best epsiodes IMHO.

I liked the first female number 2. The one who threw the costume party and dressed as Peter Pan? She had so much fun and so much authority. Too many of them had one or the other but not both.

Loved the McKern episodes too.

I am so jealous of people who have the DVDs of this show. The box set is ridiculously expensive for 17 episodes. I keep looking for it on ebay, etc., but it's always over $100. Box sets of new 20+ episode shows go for about half of that!

My favorite episode was on tonight. One of the things I noticed, was that, unlike modern shows, they weren't afraid to show everything with silence.

I haven't seen all of these yet. What I have seen I'm not sure I understand. But I'm definitely in the school of "fear the white ball of death". The thing creeps me out. Classic example of one's imagination being much more effective than any amount of pricey CGI effects.

Back from oblivion (page 8):

It only took four decades, but there's going to be a revival. No word as to whether McGoohan has any input.

http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=9486&pt=e

Already revived here. I'd miss McGoohan, but I love that big white ball.

Just to clarify, the big white ball does have a name, and it's called Rover. RESPECT THE ROVER!

I dunno about the re-make, as most remakes tend to suck.... I will keep an open mind, however...

I've only seen a couple of episodes of this show, but I did find it fairly intriguing. However, the video (or DVD, I can't remember which, now) that my family got from the library had terrible, terrible audio volume, and no closed captioning, so we had to give up on it because we couldn't hear the dialogue. The music? Came through loud and clear. But when a show already doesn't have that much dialogue, and you can't hear what it does have... it really doesn't work.

But I loooove the whooshing white ball of doom. It rules!

That's an interesting point, but I think Number 6's "unlikeability" was an unfortunate side effect of his situation and his defining character trait--mainly, individualism. When you're trapped in a Village designed to break your will and everybody in the Village could be one of "them," you're not going to be friendly and trusting. And if you're going to survive in that kind of environment with your mind and soul intact, you have to have a very highly developed sense of self--and sometimes, that doesn't leave a lot of room for caritas.

However, it's not that Number 6 was a completely unloveable bastard. He went on his crusade of vengeance in "Hammer Into Anvil" because No. 2 drove a girl he liked to suicide, and in "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling" we learned that No. 6 had a fiancee on the outside. (Although, to be honest, I found that hard to believe.)

But if you want to take the metaphorical point of view, if the whole thing was No. 6's delusion, then nobody else in the series was real. So why should he care about anybody else in the village?

The new version will not be placed in the original setting, the north Wales village of Portmeirion, or have the arty, "pop" feel of the original, according to the magazine Broadcast.

*cries*

This is going to be bad- I can FEEL it. The Prisoner is nothing if not arty.

Yes, it could very well suck. But The Prisoner is such a unique TV concept--a modern Kafkaesque nightmare--that if the new British mini retains even half of the original's mind games and allegorical weirdness, it could be great no matter what the "style" of the production.

Did anybody else here watch UPN's Nowhere Man back in the nineties? It was sort of "The Fugitive" meets "The Prisoner" and it had enough of The Prisoner's mystery, psychological warfare and paranoia to be genuinely engaging and even mind-blowing (the season/series finale). If The Prisoner's atmosphere can be approximated once, it could be again. Just got to have the right people.

Portmeirion and the pop-arty style of the costumes and so on were two of my favourite things about the original series, I just can't see myself being that interested without them. Please tell me that ‘Be seeing you’ will still be in it...

I always thought the Butler was cool: always lurking in the background...The Butler was almost like "interesting scenery" that rarely stood out much, yet was always present.

I've still got about half of "Nowhere Man" on tape somewhere. The producers were definitely Prisoner fans. I can remember one scene where Thomas Veil is even told "You are Number 6"

Sacrilege!!!!!

I've seen a couple of episodes of this years ago on PBS. I was intrigued but haven't had the opportunity to see more.

A few years ago when my daughter was little she started watching The Teletubbies and I was strangely reminded of The Prisoner. It was set in a strange little village. The villagers were controlled but some outside power. On The Teletubbies little speakers would come out of the ground and tell them what to do. It was also very British.

I think that being home with a young child may have warped me just a bit.

Wow, and here I was thinking I was the only one with this reaction to "Teletubbies." That shit's freaky, and it most definitely has a "Prisoner" vibe.

I can't see a revival being anything but crappy. I'd love to be proven wrong, but my hopes are not high.

Particularly the epi where the 'Tubbies were all chasing after big bouncy ball?

Rover returns!

McGoohan was the making of The Prisoner. Really. He wrote a bunch of the episodes and directed a lot. The character of No. 6 was based on the John Drake character he played in Danger Man/Secret Agent (remember Secret Agent Man, the song?

"he leads a life of danger, to everyone he meets he stays a stranger")

The amazing thing to me about The Prisoner (other than it was a superlative work of art) is that it got away with dissing the power of television while being broadcast on same.

McGoohan was a guest on Columbo about three, maybe four times and he always took home an Emmy for his episode. Three movies he was in are favorites of mine: Silver Streak (he was the villain); Thomasina (a Walt Disney flick about a little girl and her cat in which he played a veterinarian); and Ice Station Zebra (he played a secret agent again). He was/is a brilliant actor/writer. Deeply under-rated.

To this day McGoohan denies that No. 6 is supposed to be John Drake.

At the beginning of each episode of The Prisoner you get to see a man aguing with his superiors, turning in his ID and leaving. Then the man is drugged by someone (presumably someone who doesn't want him to be able to talk about his activities) and taken to The Village.

PM can deny it all he wants to but while #6 is supposed to represent everyman and at the same time the extraordinary man who fights against government/media control of society, he also resigned from an intelligence organization. And the ID was very similar to JD's.

I loved Nowhere Man and can't wait for its full-run DVD release on 12/26. Would definitely recommend Prisoner fans check it out, at least as a rental.

Eegah:



I didn't mean to say that #6 was/is John Drake. Just that John Drake was the starting point when the show was conceptualized. What would happen if a John Drake (secret agent) tried to resign from his organization? McGoohan went from there to: how do we (modern man/woman) cope with society which is engaged in controlling its individual members?

Just my own take on the show(s).

Ly