The Prisoner

Number Six makes his entrance.

One of my favorite TV shows is a short-lived, cultish series about an agent of a powerful secret organization in London who resigns his job without explanation and awakes the next morning in an insular place called "The Village."

Stripped of their individuality, the residents of the Village (who we infer have landed there for once knowing too much) identify themselves only as numbers, and cheerfully go about their routines in the Village's idyllic setting. Number Six, our hero, whose true name we never learn, is unable to accept his confinement and unsuccessfully attempts to escape by sea, air and land. Each day of his new existence brings conflict with his captors, who employ almost every means to extract the cause for his resignation.

"The Prisoner" (also recently remade by AMC) is a 17-episode series that ran from 1967-1968. Created by Patrick McGoohan and filmed in Portmeirion, Wales, the show is surreal and packed with symbolism that underlines the character's situation. It also confronts us with the notion that any society is, to some degree, a closed circuit and that we are all prisoners in some way.

Patrick McGoohan is iconic as Number Six: unflinching, steely and thoroughly committed to non-conformity no matter what punishments will result. Six's life in the Village is conducted entirely on his terms, the only issue is that try though he might, he cannot leave.

Always a lovely day in The Village.

The show also holds up as a vivid snapshot of late 60s style. The wardrobe, by costumer Masada Wilmot (who also did Space: 1999), reflects the tastes of the day with colorful umbrellas, crisp white pants, flat simple sneakers, striped shirts and brief A-line dresses, and of course, the famous piped jacket worn (with or without an ironic top hat) by some of the Village's gentlemen. All are dressed as if for a permanent country vacation, and there is little irony in that. The characters stroll, play chess, and divert themselves blandly, just so long as they do not resist authority, they want for nothing, not even the perfect mod minidress.

Justine Lord as "The Girl Who Was Death" - with Mary Quant compact.

Its retro appeal aside, the show is in many ways brilliantly ahead of its time, and has influenced many shows that came after: Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and Lost are only a few. McGoohan himself was at the time of production the highest paid television actor, and declined the role of 007 in a move truly befitting the "Number Six" character - he found the idea of playing James Bond to be too Hollywood, too corporate, too expected. And there was also the small matter of his refusal to carry a gun. But what fun it would have been to see him do it. Perhaps "The Prisoner" was a bit autobiographical after all.

McGoohan wears the piped jacket, one of the Village "uniforms."