The Prisoner: The Girl Who Was Death

"My name... is death!"

Well... at least the game of cat and mouse and the sequence with all the booby traps was entertaining. I loved the cyanide candles. In fact, I also used the cricket ball bomb which blows up the Colonel, complete with magnificent facial hair, just short of his century- a delightful touch, and I love that this detail appears on the headline! I also love Number Six’s response to being poisoned- drinking magnificent quantities of alcohol and making himself sick.

The set pieces are great. But that’s all this episode is- a collection of set pieces. The conceit at the end- Number Six is just reading a bedtime story to some children in a flimsy plot by Number Two to get him to let his guard down- feels very token, and this leaves the episode looking very superficial, very filler, very running-out-of-ideas. You can see why McGoohan decided to end it after just two more episodes.

Perhaps I’m being harsh; on an action/adventure level the episode works splendidly, and I’m sure it was a favourite of younger viewers. But this just isn’t what I expect of The Prisoner. I suppose you could just about manage to squint and find some kind of tenuous subtext about fear of female sexuality, but the episode isn’t really about anything.

The Prisoner: Free for All

"Very good technique. Where did you get him?

"The Civil Service. He adapted immediately."

I know it's been a while since the last episode. Fear not; I spent a week not watching stuff while I applied for a promotion at work (fingers crossed!) and blogged only a couple of things I'd prepared earlier since that time, and afterwards I focused on current telly first. Fear not, The Prisoner will continue until the end.

Anyway, this is clearly a Very Important Episode, as Patrick McGoohan both writes (under a pseudonym) and directs. It’s also one with a very obvious subtext. It’s election time in the Village and Number Two (Eric Portman this time) decides that this time for once, he should be opposed, and Number Six accepts the challenge, not entirely seriously, using his candidacy as an excuse to goad the council, who are essentially a rubber stamp, giving a rather magnificent speech. At first, he’s the candidate of freedom, but he’s soon brainwashed, in a delightful scene with a former civil servant. So we have the prospect of someone with ideals standing for office and immediately abandoning those ideals in favour of the vested interests of the status quo. Of course, this would never happen in reality.

Before the election Number Six finally finds a place where he can get a proper drink (hallelujah) where he finds Number Two, who in private (a rare situation) is just as jaded with the Village as he is. Number Six wins by a landslide, but turns out to have no actual power and is beaten up, while the foreign maid-cum-spy who has been with him all episode turns out to be the new Number Two. It’s a superb indictment of the perceived impotence of the democratic process and, while I’m not at all in favour of “they’re all the same” apathy, especially in the current age of populism, Trump, Brexit and other dangerous nonsense, this has some considerable bite.

All this happens amongst lots and lots of splendidly disorienting surrealism, dreamlike, druggy, and utterly 1967. It’s a truly excellent episode.