Cult TV Blog

I was planning a post on the Rik Mayall series Bottom. On balance I'm not sure I would call it cult TV, but nonetheless would recommend it as a jolly good view. I remain to decide on whether to post on Filthy, Rich & Catflap, which nonetheless I would highly recommend as a memorial to Rik Mayall. Meanwhile, back to Danger Man. Oh *how* I love this episode: it is a proper Cold War spy intrigue piece. The plot is relatively simple on the surface: Drake goes on a mission, finds the spy for the Other Side, job done. But it is plainly not that simple on any level. For a start it is evident that not only are spies from Russia present in London, but have even infiltrated into government! That opening scene reminds me of a sscene in The Professionals where Cowley is meeting with Russian agents, playing a gme of intelligence chess with them, to the great annoyance of Bodie & Doyle. It is very plain that the two sides are not completely divided, or even differentiated. I'm qui...

Fortunately I've found a single disc with this episode, so can now finish my blog posts on this viewing through The Prisoner, which are based on examining the thesis that Number 6 is John Drake of Danger Man. The thesis is of course that he invented The Village himself, as a security of home for agents who were a risk themselves or presented a risk to security, was horrified at what he heard of it, & resigned so that he would be taken there & could investigate. It has been some time since I have watched The Prisoner, & I was expecting that this episode would provide no support for this theory, which was created jointly by McGoohan & George Markstein, & the received wisdom is that McGoohan changed the series markedly in a different direction - some change was also imposed by changes in episode numbers & the lack of the projected second series - after his conflict with Markstein became such that Markstein left the programme. There are two huge problems wi...

This is another of my favourite episodes of The Prisoner: I love the long-drawn-out interrogation of Drake, which he turns on its head. Unfortunately it does little to confirm the identification of Number 6 with John Drake which is what I am (trying to) concentrate on in this run through The Prisoner, except in one aspect. During Drake's long conversation with Number 2 he says that he knows too much about Number 2. The point is that he is actually behind bars as he says it, indicating that he knows too much to be let out. This confirms to my mind tge principle that The Village was created to contain people who knew too much. Significantly when Drake shuts Number 2 in a cage, the butler immediately switches sides. This is immediately preceded by an exchange where Drake tells Number 2 that he is not the boss, Number 1 is the boss. That he then locks up Number 2 & the butler defers to him indicates that he is himself Number 1. Yes, we all know this, but from a point of view o...

I commented in my last post on The Prisoner that from here on I thought the series would be less capable of being understood in terms of Number 6 as John Drake, the agent who resigned to investigate his brainchild Village. I especially thought that of this episode, but I've been obliged radically to reconsider that view; I knew blogging about TV would get me thinking about it. I've always thought that late 60s weirdness infiltrated The Prisoner towards the end of the series, & to be frank I think I've always assumed - as a result of not paying enough attention - that the production team got more & more off their heads as it went on, smoked too much weed, & set out to find themselves, resulting in the discovery of who Number 1 is. How relieved, then, I am to find that this episode can be understood in terms of Number 6 = Drake. The bedtime story he is telling the children is plainly the story of some of his exploits on active service as Danger Man. In fact t...

This is going to be a brief post for two reasons. Firstly, this episode doesn't add anything at all to the debate whether Number 6 is John Drake or not. Secondly, I'm afraid I don't really have much of a take on this one that hasn't already been said endlessly by everyone. Except for this one thing - is it not obvious to everyone else, as it is to me, that The Kid is actually The Butler? The silence & the top hat convince me of this. Another reason for passing over this one so fast is I want to rush on to the next, which happens to be one of my all-time favourites. This episode can be read as a commentary on the Vietnam war, of course. Kanner is absolutely superb, no really, superb as The Kid, chilling beyond belief. Sadly for my conviction that Number 6 is John Drake, I feel for the rest of the series the identification will become unsupportable. With George Markstein gone, the series goes in the direction McGoohan wanted it to. ------------------

There is loads of meat on the bones of this episode, no wonder it it so extensively chewed over by the fans. In fact there might be more than I can deal with, so I'm forcing myself to stick to my intention in this run through The Prisoner, so shall try to at least cover whether Number 6 can be identified with John Drake in Danger Man. Of course I'll be wanting to talk about anything else that takes my fancy in this episode, but I think I shall try to avoid the substantial changes from the original script. Suffice to say this episode was originally intended to be placed in the aborted second series of The Prisoner, & is said to be a fairly good example of what the series would have been like. Hypothetically Drake/Number 6 would have been sent on missions outside The Village. I can't make up my mind whether this would make the whole premise of the show fall apart. Whoever he is Number 6 is not kindly disposed towards The Village authorities, & is not open to bein...

This episode comes as a welcome relief to me after It's Your Funeral. Things actually happen in this one to develop our understanding of The Village & Drake: it's just a pity very little happens (at least superficially) a propos the Drake/Number 6 identification that is the main point of this run-through of The Prisoner. For me the first point of this episode remains (perhaps as a hangover from It's Your Funeral) that nothing in The Village is real. The course of 'unmutualism' treatment to which Drake is subjected, then the 'social conversion' to which he is supposed to be subjected, is plainly set up & Drake knows it. His demeanour throughout is one of a man who knows that the threatened action is not actually going to happen. The only real dangers he faces - & acts as if he is facing real dangers - are the three occasions in this episode where Villagers subject him to physical violence. Since the ultimate threat (lobotomy) is not real, the...

It may seem as if I've taken a lengthy break from this run-through of The Prisoner, which is based on the approach that Number 2 is actually John Drake, the star of Danger Man. I examined a couple of episodes of Danger Man, because they featured the actor Martin Miller, who also features in this episode of The Prisoner. My thesis was that his use & reuse was deliberate (as was that of Peter Bowles in A, B, & C), since The Prisoner is not one of those 1960s series where the same actors keep reappearing in different roles, & his reuse was intended to signify the same person, appearing in different guises. My theory is that he could well be an agent of possibly another Nato power, who also ends up in The Village. My pet theory aside, The Village authorities have clearly decided they've got to get the information out of Drake, so set him up big time. Time scales are mentioned, & the powers behind The Village are clearly impatient for his information, as part of...

My last post was actually about the reason the photos vanished: I didn't realise deleting a picasa album would do that, derp. It left only my profile picture. I also talked about deciding what to do about this, & now I have decided: it would be too much to replace all the screenshots, especially as some of them were specific images referred to in posts, so I have replaced the title picture of Steed & Keel, will call the other pictures a loss, & continue from here. I realised too late for inclusion in my last post on an episode of Danger Man in which the actor Martin Miller appears, which I am writing in preparation for the episode of The Prisoner in which he appears, that there is a thoroughly Village way of understanding his character's death in the episode The Lovers. I am downplaying it in this run through The Prisoner because it is not really my main purpose this time, which is to explore the theoretical identification between John Drake & Number 6. It ...

The reason I'm considering this episode of Danger Man, & also Fish on the Hook, at this point, is I want to examine them before coming to the next episode of The Prisoner, since all three have an actor called Martin Miller in them. I feel that this may be slightly more than coincidence, & my thesis is that this is deliberate to recreate Danger Man's contacts in The Prisoner. In the case of this Danger Man episode the character played by Miller dies, so the two successive appearances don't refer to the same person, but I feel he here represents an embryonic idea for a character who recurs in the other two programmes, who I suspect may be identified as the same person. I realise the most obvious argument against this is the simple fact that the same crowd of familiar faces do appear over & over again in all of these 1960s TV shows. That is insurmountable, so I feel that this recurrence of actors between the two shows will always be one of those things that you ...

There are a number of things (among others) that appear about this episode on wikipedia: 1) Drake (don't forget the theme of this run through is to see how much water the John Drake/Number 6 identification carries) makes no attempt to escape or resist The Village's attempts to control him; 2) Patrick Cargill, who plays Number 2, also played Thorpe in Many Happy Returns, & it not stated whether or not they are the same person;  3) it gives the themes as insecurity, paranoia & conspiracy thinking in a leader (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_into_Anvil). Of these three I personally would be interested in the second, & am choosing to avoid the first & the third in this discussion. They take their place at the head of this post to set up a sort of 'orthodoxy' in understanding this episode, so that I can subvert it. For a start, the quote from Goethe explains the philosophy behind the more episode: 'You must be master and win, or serve and lose,...

Probably the most iconic scene in an episode of The Prisoner in this one, the scene of the chess game with Villagers acting as the pieces. This iconic scene dominates the episode, which is a pity because you'd have to be hiding behind the sofa with a bag over you head not to notice the chess game/Village metaphor, but some of the other, more subtle things can be missed here. Ironically - I wouldn't like to speculate that this was done deliberately - this relates perfectly to what Drake learns in his investigation in this episode. The beguiling imagery & the languid foppishness of Peter Wynegarde playing Number 2 distract from the bleak key message here: *nothing* is what it seems. Things are always more complicated than they seem. The immediate message from Drake's point of view would have to be that the tentacles of The Village authority spread far & wide & you cannot really tell who is who. One of the key things he has set out to find out in his investiga...

I am in danger of being completely side-tracked from my aim in this run-through of The Prisoner, namely to examine the series in the light of the theory that Number 6 is John Drake, by this multi-faceted episode. So to start off with I will resolutely stick to that plan & allow myself to be deflected later in this post. The biggest issue, it seems to me, with this episode, is one of placement in the series. It was made & broadcast eighth, but many viewing orders recommend watching it second: placing it so early in the series is based on the fact that this is one of the episodes where Drake says, 'I'm new here'. I feel this issue is inescapable in explaining Drake's role & the progress of his investigation in this episode, so I will fearlessly weigh in & express the opinion that this episode should *not* be placed early, that Drake is *not* new in The Village when he says these words, & that at least one of the things he says in the sequence wher...

How I love this episode! It is strange, because I love The Prisoner & this episode is one of my favourites, despite it being definitely the odd one out. For me what marks it out is the apparent absence of institutional behaviour on the part of Drake: by this I mean that most episodes are marked by at least some manoeuvring with the authorities in The Village, & while present here it is not apparent that that is what is happening until the end. In fact institutional neurosis is present in this episode: a major aspect of institutional behaviour is the fear of reprisals if you do something wrong, twisted in this case to mean that the authorities create an environment where there is something wrong, presumably calculated to create discomfort. The natural question would be to ask yourself what has happened & where everyone has gone: the obvious answer is that something has happened that you don't know about! A further institutional element in this story is that by makin...

Watching through The Prisoner, focussing on the hypothetical identification of John Drake with Number 6, has made me reflect that I haven't really seen McGoohan in anything other than The Prisoner & Danger Man. I thought I had better make an effort to to see what he is like in different roles, to get a feel as to the breadth of the characters he is capable of & the relative closeness of Drake & Number 6. Some actors play a relatively homogenous array of roles (Ross Kemp springs to mind, in fact it's odd to see him coming across as an affable chap in documentaries), while some actors can seemingly take on different personas at the drop of a hat (my vote is on Tom Hardy for this). In an attempt to become better-acquainted with McGoohan's acting ability I bought some Columbo DVDs today. Unfortunately I managed to miss the episodes in which he appears as the villain (derp!), but am looking forward to seeing Honor Blackman as a no-doubt seductive killer. All of th...

The general has of course been referred to before in The Prisoner. I have to confess at the outset that this is not one of my personal favourite episodes, largely because I don't take to the Speedlearn idea. However Drake, true to form, remains only interested in his professed task of getting away: of course in these posts I am taking the view that that is not his actual or only  aim, rather he wants to investigate his idea gone bad & getting away to report or publicise what is happening. In reality the education pretense is another ploy by The Village authorities: those already broken go along with it enthusiastically, but it is another way to put pressure on Drake. It is as if The Village is a behavioural experiment: they've placed Drake in a pseudo-democratic environment to see how he responds, & now in a pseudo-academic environment. The wonder is that they bother: even seeing this series through for the first time in the sixties, by now you would have got Dra...