In praise of 'The Prisoner'

Childhood dies hard, but unfortunately after a certain age, childhood heroes do not prove so resilient.

It was thus sadly noted last week that Patrick McGoohan had died Jan. 13 at the age of 80. This news probably meant nothing to many of my readers, but to some of us who were fortunate enough to grow up at a certain time in a certain place, McGoohan will always represent the epitome of grace under pressure, stylish intelligence and ice-cool nerves.

That reputation rests squarely on two short-lived British TV series from the 1960s, although the same quality is found in all of his work - from 1962's "All Night Long" where he plays a jazz-drumming Iago who would not hesitate to destroy what he loves to the classic episodes of "Columbo" where he played several of Peter Falk's most cunning adversaries.

But to a 10-year-old child who had not yet been able to see Sean Connery's performance as James Bond, it was McGoohan's role as John Drake on "Secret Agent" in the mid-1960s that defined the antihero's snarling supremacy. As the moody theme song proclaimed, "There's a man who leads a life of danger/ To everyone he meets he stays a stranger/ With every move he makes, another chance he takes/ Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow."

After two years, Drake was gone, although the series permeated the late 1960s and '70s airwaves in the form of reruns - but McGoohan was just getting started. The man who had turned down the role of Bond and the role of Simon Templar on "The Saint" (which went to a future Bond, Roger Moore) decided to use his fame to leverage a new series that would change people's perceptions for all time of secret agents, television and Patrick McGoohan.

The new series was, of course, "The Prisoner" - a show which helped to invent the concept of the miniseries and which brought a literary panache to the story of its "retired" secret agent that has never been equaled on TV before or since. From the first minute of the first episode when McGoohan enters a door marked "Way Out," we are in the hands of a surreal imagination that fully comprehends ambiguity and mystery. In the hippie parlance of the 1960s, "way out" referred to anything that was mind-blowing, beyond comprehension or too amazing to put into words. In "The Prisoner," that was exactly the kind of experience we got, and we learned that the "way out" is really the way in, but the deeper you go the less you know.

McGoohan's character, who is unnamed but goes by the title "Number 6," finds himself transported in the first episode from London to a peculiar international village on an unnamed island which has no contact with the outside world. Like the heroes in Franz Kafka's "The Trial" and "The Castle," Number 6 has no idea why he has been sent there, nor any reasonable explanation why people are acting so strangely around him.

Most of the 17 episodes begin with variations on an opening dialogue that starts with Number 6 asking "Where am I?" and being told cryptically "In the Village." The dialogue then continues:

"What do you want?"

"Information"

"Whose side are you on?

"That would be telling. We want information… information… information…"

"You won't get it."

By hook or by crook we will."

"Who are you?"

"I am the new Number 2."

"Who is Number 1?"

"You are Number 6."

"I am not a number - I am a free man!"

That last declaration became a credo of sorts in the 1960s, at a time when it was already obvious that individuality was being valued less and less, and lockstep conformity was the likely destiny of free and democratic society. Of course, the hippies thought they were "free," but with the passage of time, it is plain that they were just brightly clad residents of the Village who didn't mind losing their identities as long as they retained their freedom to do nothing.

"The Prisoner," of course, was a completely separate enterprise from "Secret Agent," but in part it is also the logical culmination of that earlier show, whose theme song had a chorus that taunted, "Secret agent man, secret agent man: They've given you a number and taken away your name."

McGoohan, who rankled under the strictures of his contract for "Secret Agent," was no doubt proclaiming his own freedom when he shouted, "I am not a number - I am a free man!"

But more than that, he inspired a generation. With a sneer and a smile, a smirk and a frown, McGoohan converted the cynicism of the late 1960s into timeless entertainment that never settled for easy answers.

Today, "The Prisoner" is available on DVD, and it's also available online as streaming video from amctv.com. This year, AMC is also releasing a new "reinterpretation" of "The Prisoner" starring Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Ian McKellan as No. 2. It may not be as good as the original, but it is a fitting and timely tribute to McGoohan.

? Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com