McGOOHAN’S NUMBER SIX IS STILL NUMBER ONE

Sharon and I warily but eagerly watched AMC’s re-working of the landmark mid-1960s television series entitled, “THE PRISONER.” We should have been more wary. Jim Caviezel, Ian McKellen and the rest of the cast – especially actor Lennie James, who did a marvelously affecting performance as “147,” the cab driver — deserve credit for a job well-done. Individual scenes within the six-part mini-series were quite nicely accomplished. The problem with this production was that whoever conceived its plot seems to have been philosophically more in tune with the administration of The Village than championing individualism. For that reason – the overall theme – this new version of “THE PRISONER” was horribly disappointing.

I generally ascribe to the idea that, if I can’t write or say something positive, I won’t say anything at all. But the message found in those original seventeen episodes of “THE PRISONER” is too important to let this new mini-series masquerade under its name. In the new mini-series, “6”ends up working for the betterment of human kind. Disillusioned by man’s shallowness, he comes around to the idea that he shouldn‘t just be thinking of himself, but should think of others. Yadda, yadda, yadda. The original Number Six would not let himself be broken and took pride in his stubbornly held individuality. Sure, he’d help people. He was a good guy. But, he wouldn’t presume to re-mold other lives because he didn’t have the right to do that, any more than his adversaries had the right to re-mold him.

Number Six fiercely proclaimed, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered!” While “6” has no philosophical baseline Sharon and I could discern. He’s a decent fellow and, eventually, comes around to the idea of being socially productive. He sells out without realizing it. Those who would decry individualism in the name of the greater good may deserve to live in the sort of society they wish to create. The rest of us don’t.

The battle for individual freedom has never been more important than it is right now. Never has the concept of individualism been more under attack. Sharon and I raised our children on the world view of Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six. McGoohan and George Markstein – co-creators of the original – composed a wonderfully entertaining, sometimes funny, always enlightening hymn to human freedom. This six episode re-envisioning played a much different tune.

TIME TO STAND UP FOR INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY?

WILL WE “BE SEEING YOU?”

By

JERRY AHERN

Two weeks ago, Sharon was browsing through TV Guide and noticed that the Independent Film Channel (IFC) was running the original 1967 series “The Prisoner,” the brainchild of the seriously brilliant Patrick McGoohan – actor, director, producer, writer, two-time Emmy winner and thinker.  Sharon and I first watched the saga of “Number Six” when it was new to the USA and aired as a summer replacement series. This was in 1969.  It was produced for British television in 1967.  There were seventeen episodes, each an hour in length when shown with commercial interruption, as the series was intended to be seen.  Over the intervening years, “The Prisoner” has shown up on Public Television and in the home video market.  It’s available on DVD and, one of these days, Sharon and I’ll stop promising ourselves to buy “The Prisoner” and actually buy it. 

Although totally different one from the other, one wouldn’t be stretching credulity to say that Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” is to television what Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is to literature.  McGoohan’s masterpiece is that good.   McGoohan – who created, produced, acted in and directed much of “The Prisoner”—threw in everything, clues galore to what was really going on.  Everything from the id, the ego and the superego to superspy action comedy to a psychologically quirky western is included as Number Six resigns from British Intelligence, is knock-out gassed, kidnapped and awakens in “The Village.”  The Village is run by “Number Two.”

At this juncture, if you are unfamiliar with this classic, you might be asking, “Who is Number One?”  Oddly enough, that’s what Number Six continually asks when the various Number Twos – they don’t last long, failing in trying to break Number Six – demand to know why he resigned. Number Six will not reveal any information, because he does not know on whose side the mysterious Number One’s malevolent minions happen to be.  Number Six defiantly proclaims, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” 

This is heady stuff for television.  As this is written on October 4^th, IFC has only run the first six episodes, three each Friday night.  They will run the remaining episodes ganged together.  Or, you can go to AMC’s website and see the episodes.  AMC, on November 15, 2009, will be showing the new original mini-series version of “The Prisoner,” starring Jim Caviezel as “Six” and Ian McKellen as “Two.”  If the new mini-series will be even almost as good as the original, it will be a landmark television event.  If the in-your-face individuality or death philosophy of McGoohan’s original is made “politically correct,” it will be very sad. Hopefully, “Six” will truly be “Number Six,” the ultimate rugged individualist who will never break.

McGoohan’s Number Six is undiminished.  “The Prisoner” is just as resonant today as it was when Sharon and I were first impressed and inspired by it forty years ago.  If you believe in individual liberty and despise big, intrusive government, you owe it to yourself to see the original McGoohan series.  And, you owe it to McGoohan’s memory – he died after a short illness at age eighty, on January 13, 2009 – to give the new mini-series a chance.  Number Six was wonderfully quotable. Picture, if you will, the leading Congressional Democrats trying to push their socialist agenda and a defiant man seething with controlled rage shouting, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered. My life is my own.”  As my old high school creative writing teacher Jim Norris used to say, “Good stuff!”   As they say in The Village, “Be seeing you!”