Danger Man: The Ubiquitous Mister Lovegrove
When I started this blog I had an ongoing fear that I would find I had blogged about all the interesting shows and run out of things to say. This no longer frightens me because I now realise that good TV can be watched repeatedly and bring different things to mind.
In my first post I decided to take the view that this episode was a true precursor of The Prisoner. This time round the episode has made me think differently, purely because of the opening scene of the car crash. It is evident that Drake of course works for an organisation. And this has taken my train of thought two ways.
The first is that the opening scenes remind me of the Avengers episode, The Hour That Never Was. Visually they are incredibly similar. My mind is therefore already moving towards the sixties trend for all things spying and the other sixties trend of spoofing the world of spying and the contemporary cold war.
The other way my mind has wandered is towards James Bond: most evidently the idea is explicitly planted by an actual Bond novel appearing. Obviously Drake will never be the same sort of person as Bond but it seems to me that in this one he looks the most like Bond he ever does, and inhabits a fantasy version of Bond's world. The casino and fight scenes are particularly Bondian.
The other thing in the sixties psyche which I didn't think about the last time I wrote about this one was drugs. I wouldn't go to the stake for this view, you must understand, because unless Drake was already intoxicated when he crashed the car, or was drugged while unconscious, there is no apparent opportunity to drug him. That said, the events of the episode have a distinctly trippy feel about them.
Further, there is a theme underlying of being discovered, uncovered, etc, even if by mistake, and as a result being ruined. If this is a trip, it is definitely a bad trip, but also draws on a common fear or nightmare. This is a dramatisation of that dream people have where they are naked in the street, only with the addition of the other common fear of mistaken identity.
My favourite line: 'Thanks, but I feel a lot safer with you as an enemy'. I like the scenes of Drake at home in this episode.
I regret that the TV minus 50 blog is no longer being updated, and I owe the illustration and some ideas for this post to it.
Of course you can tell where I'm forced to go with this can't you? I was going to say something about the fact a show can be understood so many different ways indicates that it's quality. But that's what I always think about The Prisoner so I've fenced myself into a corner!