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He (Patrick McGoohan) once was a top secret agent with unwavering loyalty for his country - but then he quit the service on issues of conscience ... and suddenly he wakes up in what at first looks like an idyllic coastal tourist village, with no idea how he got there. However, he soon has to realize there's no way to get a cab out of the village or even phone out, and before long he lands at the village leader, Number Two (Guy Doleman), who politely but in no uncertain terms informs him he - like all the other villagers - is a prisoner here, and will remain as long as he doesn't give them the information they want - without specifying who "them" actually is or what information they want. To emphasize the seriousness of the situation Number Two shows our hero, who will soon be known as Number Six, how another villager is pretty much swallowed up by a giant inflatable ball - apparently the prime way to guard the village. Still, Number Six makes an attempt to get away on foot via the coastline - and is run down by one of the giant balls himself. He wakes up in the local hospital next to an old friend of his, Cobb (Paul Eddington), who claims to have been in the village for about a month, and who's here so "they" can forcefully extract some information from his brain. Cobb soon throws himself out of a window to kill himself. At his funeral, Number Six spots a woman (Virginia Haskell) who's visibly touched by his death, and who Number Six figures has been an accomplice of Cobb's. And really, she provides him with a means to get to a helicopter to escape the village - but of course, she's actually in cahoots with Number Two, and ultimately the helicopter lands Number Six right where he started, and he's escorted home by a giant ball. However, it ultimately turns out all this was staged by of all people Cobb, who has only faked his own death to help in slowly breaking Number Six, and who's actually part of whoever it is holding Number Six ...

Not a big success upon its initial screening, The Prisoner has become somewhat of a cult series over the years, due to its total abstraction of espionage thriller mainstays as well as its quirkiness and occasional trips into the surreal - first and foremostly of course reflected in the giant inflatable balls that guard the village. And everything that made the series great is already there in the first episode, from a plot that leaves more questions open than it answers and remains intentionally unclear about its premise to its wonderful sets to its many 1960s sci-fi elements to the very straight performance of Patrick McGoohan - who also created the series - which wonderfully clashes with its many nonsensical plot elements. It's just a joy to watch, and a deserved cult classic - that was just too far ahead of its time.

By the way, The Prisoner is to a degree considered as a direct continuation of Patrick McGoohan's hit series Danger Man - something only fortified by the fact that The Village in this series, actually Portmeirion, Wales, UK, was also used as a stand-in for an Italian village in the first episode of Danger Man, View from the Villa.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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