Events

The outrage felt by many at the conclusion of last year’s Twin Peaks sequel was nothing compared to the reception the final episode of The Prisoner got when it was first broadcast in 1967. Patrick MacGoohan was a substantial British star for the spy series Danger Man (retitled Secret Agent in the US), a role he tired of after several seasons. To renew his contract, he got the show’s producer to agree to let him create a spin off series in which his character quits but is kidnapped and taken to a seaside resort village to be monitored. (Or so goes one version of the story: suitably for a series about a man in a place where the truth is never clear, the origins of The Prisoner have been endlessly argued.)

Designed for a short run—MacGoohan reportedly only wanted to do seven episodes, but was persuaded to do 18 so that the show could be sold to US television—The Prisoner follows the title character’s endlessly frustrated Kafka-esque attempts to escape and to learn who is keeping him captive. Stymieing escape is the show’s most memorable visual flourish: Rover, a towering bubble that pulls back those who would flee the village. At a time when just about every television show was neatly wrapped up at the conclusion of each episode, the final episode of The Prisoner raised far more questions than it answered, turning MacGoohan into a television pariah.

It took fifty years, but the world has finally caught up with The Prisoner, one of the greatest shows in television history and a clear model for the kind of shows that dominate living room viewing today. A relatively lavish production for 1960s television (especially in England, where most shows were still filmed in black and white), The Prisoner looks great on a theater screen, as you’ll know if you saw the first two episodes when they were shown at the  North Park Theater a few weeks back.  Reaction to those was good enough that the theater will be showing episodes 3 and 4 — “A, B, and C” and “Free for All” — this Sunday at 11:30 am, with episode 5, “The Schizoid Man,” to follow on Sunday, September 2.