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The Prisoner - Arrival
episode 1
UK 1967
produced by David Tomblin, Patrick McGoohan (executive) for Everyman Films, ITC
directed by Don Chaffey
starring Patrick McGoohan, Virginia Maskell, Guy Doleman, Paul Eddington, George Baker, Angelo Muscat, Barbara Yu Ling, Stephanie Randall, Jack Allen, Fabia Drake, Denis Shaw, Oliver MacGreevy, Frederick Piper, Patsy Smart, Christopher Benjamin, Peter Swanwick, David Garfield, Peter Brace, Keith Peacock, Seamus Byrne, Fenella Fielding (voice)
written by George Markstein, David Tomblin, created by Patrick McGoohan, title theme by Ron Grainer
TV-series The Prisoner
review by Mike Haberfelner
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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.
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