The Prisoner: The Chimes of Big Ben

"I don't want a man of fragments..."

I’ve asked around and ummed and ahhed and done a bit of reading to see what the best order is to watch the seventeen episodes, and concluded that the order in my DVD set (the ITC order) will do. So here’s a somewhat arbitrary second episode for your delectation.

There’s a new Number Two, the splendid Leo McKern, although Christopher Benjamin as Number Two’s assistant seems to be a kind of Permanent Secretary. There is our first “I am not a number. I am a free man”. There’s the same opening sequence with the resignation, albeit truncated, I suspect the version we will get from now on. And there’s the Village, of course, both as Orwellian and as Kafkaesque as ever, with its curfews, it’s awful tannoy waking everyone up at the same time in a dreadful conformity, and, worst of all, “alcohol-free” whisky and vodka, which is an affront to civilisation itself.

This episode focuses on new arrival Number Eight, or Nadia, a seeming parallel to Number Six, from Estonia or so she says, although her surname sounds suspiciously Slavic to me. She gains his confidence and they exploit an art competition to escape together, believing they are in Lithuania and escaping across the border to Poland. They seem to arrive in London and... it’s all a simulation. They never left the Village, and it was all a plot to get him to explain to two familiar faces, both seemingly in on it, why he resigned. And Nadia was in charge all along.

It’s a fun little twist, and tells us something about what we may expect from the format. We have another escape, a last minute sleight of hand, and we are back to square one in a village which we no longer have any reason to believe is in Lithuania. There’s some interesting talk about “sides” and the Cold War which very much dates the whole thing, but it’s interesting that, overwhelmingly British though the Village may feel, we’re invited to consider that it is not necessarily in the UK.

A fascinating episode, although I’m genuinely intrigued to see what else they can do with what seems to be a rather restrictive format.