(October 27, 1967; writer: Terence Feely; director: Pat Jackson)
In 2019, the line between television and le cinema is blurred to the max. Major directors do important work for television now. Auteur shit. Shit that’s a part of the same conversations that people have about theatrical movies. There are people who will argue that there’s still a division between the two forms of media, but, from where I sit, it looks like the walls are a’ tumblin’ down, Charlie.
The rise of high-definition television and cable networks (and streaming services) who can be more ambitious than their more dorky broadcast TV counterparts, still tethered to those FCC regulations and Doritos commercials, are the obvious steps forward.
But there were earlier advances toward this. The original run of Twin Peaks is a stepping stone, for sure. In my opinion, Miami Vice was one, too. (I intend to write about that show here in time, if you care.)
And way back in the 1960s, The Prisoner was similarly ambitious. Over fifty years later, these episodes look and behave like “a movie” to me. Its shots are beautifully composed and packed with information. Its background characters are sometimes a Fellini-like collection of memorable faces and bodies. Nothing about it seems cheap. When they went for a special effect, they put in the work to pull it off.
“Schizoid Man”, in which star Patrick McGoohan plays two roles, is a perfect example of what I’m babbling about.
(I’m also going to spoil the fuck out of it in this piece, so beware.)
It’s an episode that pulls off the Parent Trap trick. McGoohan plays his exact double and often interacts with himself in the same shot. The effect is next to seamless. On today’s atomic-powered HD television displays, you can see where the screen is split, but to people watching back when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a new album, it had to have looked like McGoohan’s identical twin guest-starred here.
Meanwhile, the script is mind-twisting all around. It’s meant to stay with you long after the BBC, or your local TV station, signs off for the night.
The mysterious keepers of The Village desperately want ONE little piece of information from British ex-secret agent Patrick McGoohan (or “Number Six”, as they call him in The Village, where no one has a name).
Why did he leave his job?
That’s it. That’s all they want to know. That’s all they’ve wanted to know for five episodes now. Somehow though this is the secret of the century and McGoohan won’t say a word. Meanwhile, he’s too valuable to kill or even injure. They can’t harm one hair on his suave British head. They can’t torture him for the information. All they can do is wage psychological warfare on him and try to break him down, or at least trick him, into giving up the goods.
They have to get weird and creative.
They have to enter his dreams.
They have to fool him into thinking that he’s won an election in which he’s now in charge of his serene and teeming rural village prison.
And in this one they try to convince him that he’s not even himself. Somehow they found his exact physical double and they bring that guy into The Village to fuck with him.
Where did they find this character? “That would be telling.”
For today’s nitpicky audience, a show like this might be obligated to explain it, but The Prisoner tosses this absurdity at us overhanded and expects us to catch it. We get zero background information on that guy or where he came from. He’s just there and he’s playing along 100% and that’s that.
It’s also the furthest so far that The Village gets to crippling McGoohan’s confidence. As a man of rock solid mental constitution, it’s unthinkable to him that he could lose his mind, but even more crazy here is the painstaking insanity of his new situation. It’s enough to give him doubts.
He wakes up one day and his hair is a different color and he has a goofy mustache and even his dominant hand has switched to the left. He’s been deprogrammed and altered. His double is more like him than he is. The Village did a great job at executing a supremely fucked-up plan.
The plot turns on something that doesn’t make much sense. McGoohan’s link to sanity turns out to be a minor injury to his finger that happens early in the episode. It’s the thing that knocks him back to reality and reminds him that he is himself. Meanwhile, The Village’s plot takes weeks, or even months, to execute, as we see in flashbacks. (McGoohan grows a heavy beard as he’s kept in a constant state between sedation and disorientation while the Village scientists go at him with electric shocks to alter the fundamental aspects of his being.)
His finger surely would have healed during that time, right?
Also, if The Village is so detailed in their effort to pass off a double of McGoohan that they replicated a mole on his hand, surely they wouldn’t overlook this blemish on his finger, right?
Or maybe not. Maybe some wounds don’t heal so fast. Maybe even big brains still forget things. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m no stick in the mud.
Call it dream logic. Call it fairy tale logic. Call it just plain unreality. This series walks its own strange walk.
That’s another thing that The Prisoner has in common with le cinema. It’s a series that treats the screen as an entrance to a dream world. Hey, what else are cameras, lights and actors for?
The makers of The Prisoner didn’t have a big screen or booming sound to work with, but they did what they could. They made up for the modest presentation of the time with solid craft and high-flying absurdity that never falls into camp. They’re dead serious about this world in which all bets are off and nobody can be trusted.
The small screen can burn up with paranoia and mystery, too.