Cult TV Blog

For a moment this evening I thought I was going to get majorly derailed from my plan to watch through The Prisoner purely in the light of George Markstein's conception of the series (see here ). This is because I'm looking forward with bated breath to Big Finish's release of audio versions of the missing Series 1 episodes of The Avengers, & watched through Girl on a Trapeze while I was eating, so this post was very nearly about that, until I disciplined myself. The first thing to hint at an identification between John Drake & The Prisoner is in the titles: in the original half-hour Danger Man episodes, Drake is seen leaving a modern building & driving off in a topless car. Here he drives in to the underground car park of a -presumably - modern, or at least recently renovated building, in a car which would so obviously be John Drake's cup of tea. Did I mention that I wouldn't hesitate to over-analyse The Prisoner within an inch of its life? - I ...

A word of explanation for the 'unorthodox' way I am going to write about The Prisoner. The Prisoner was my second love in the 1960s cult tv field, after The Avengers, & it's high time I watched through it again. The reason for this post is to lay out how I am going to do that, since the series is capable of being understood on so many levels. I'm going to try to look at it through the eyes of George Markstein, original script editor until his bust up with McGoohan, whose understanding of the show was quite different from what it turned into: 'According to author James Follett, a protege of Prisoner co-creator George Markstein, Markstein had mapped out an explanation for the Village. In George Markstein's mind, a young John Drake, the lead character in the television series Danger Man, had once submitted a proposal for how to deal with retired secret agents who posed a security risk. Drake's idea was to create a comfortable retirement centre where f...

This was obviously designated as the last of the series to end on a high note, as theatricals put it. It's just a pity it was the last of the only series! It suits its placement perfectly since it is a riot of wild eccentricity gone off the rails in a big way. The very premise - a terrorist group pressurising for the independence of the Isle of Wight - blasts us straight into Avengers territory. The opening scenes of the plotters make them look distinctly odd, but they fade into mere normality when we first see Hawksworth polishing his skis wearing a fur coat, yachting cap & monocle. Lottie intrudes on this in a rare use of the magical omniscience technique - normally in Spyder's Web the reason for & explanation of a case clearly come from above by means which are shown - but here she just appears with the story off pat. The technique is used also by Lottie & Hawksworth just turning up without explanation at a meeting of the respectable group campaigning for in...

I can now see one of the advantages of having a different writer for each episode: they are genuinely different. This episode is - not in a bad way - very much of its time indeed, which if all of the episodes were like this would make the whole series seem more dated than it does. The references to Suez & a dog called Hitler, though, make the events of these episodes seem a very long time ago, compared to series such as The Avengers & most of the ones I like which avoid direct cultural references. Nor are the cultural references missing in this one: once again references which time it down almost to the year. There is even an obviously homosexual character, although this is not made explicit, which gives the impression that this episode is trying a bit hard for gritty realism. Nothing wrong with that, as such, but I would identify the repeated cultural references as a weakness because they distract from the main line of the plot. On the other hand a somewhat straightforwar...

J. Smith uses his most unusual communication to date in this one: a child's colouring book. I particularly like the image of a flying coffin. This is another example of the light touch used in this programme to handle some fairly weighty subjects, in this case the recovery of the body of Hubert Anstruther, lost in the Alps since 1914, & lost in transit to London. As a relatively straightforward detective/spy story this works very well, & the division between Lottie's & Hawksworth's roles effectively provides the variety of two plot threads at once. The mentions of strawberries & the Gourmet Emporium as having an involvement in the case help to provide an Avengers feel to the episode. Other than that, visually the epsiode almost looks in many ways like a pastiche of 1960s spy shows - the repeated night scenes, even the setting of the airport. It is prevented from coming across as too gritty by the lightness of touch with which it is handled. Unusually fo...

Culture clash, of course, is the well-worn theme of this one. Of course it may be necessary to contextualise this in the milieu of the 1970s, the age when everything modern was wonderful, & yet the decade was marked by some incredibale conflcit, the oil crisis has a good go at putting the kibosh on the consumption of the modern era. It's actually rather difficult to know where to begin on the wealth of culture clashes featured in this episode, with characteristic differences of opinion between Lottie & Hawksworth woven in for good measure. President Baras, of course references Che Guevara, who had died by execution five years before this episode. He is played superlatively by Mike Pratt, of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) fame: a truly versatile actor. Baras is not merely the popular folk hero figure but is also - on the surface -  the representative of modernity in his nation, while it becomes apparent he is not averse to the old ways. As a side note Pratt is only in h...

My unofficial subtitle for this one is 'Spyder's Web does Agatha Christie'. Actually this is among my favourite episodes. It is the other one of the two that survive in colour, but oh what a difference from Red Admiral! The episode actually starts very much in an eccentric '60s Lord Kitchener's Valet sort of way. Despite his dangerous legacy the opening scenes make light of Woffington's destructive inventions, & I love that he wears both a leather apron & a bowler hat. To be absolutely frank, the film of this one is showing its age, although you don't notice scratches & the odd jump so much because of the quality of the story. I personally also don't object to the cut to stock footage of a state funeral for Woffington, even though the colour values are so completely different it makes you jump. This, kids, was what TV was like before CGI, & at the time I remember noticing those sort of changes without really noticing, because that ...