The complete 1960s series The Prisoner is now available as a free download.
TV's most individualist character made communitarian country swoon
"Patrick McGoohan finally escaped," a reader of the French newspaper Le Monde noted with loving tenderness yesterday in an online forum dedicated to the late visionary behind the cult TV series The Prisoner. The sentiment came just short of asserting that the actor, writer, and director was better off dead, but then, the French have had a distinctly existential relationship with their revered secret agent man for 40 years now.
The Prisoner was arguably the most popular vehicle of libertarian ideas in socialist France over the past half-century. Ask a Parisian to name an Ayn Rand book and he'll give you a blank stare; mention The Prisoner and you'll likely hear back the French version of the series' catch-phrase, "Be seeing you"–Bonjour chez vous! Unveiled just months before the May '68 riots, this philosophical and rebellious series struck a nerve in an overwhelmingly Catholic country at a time when its long-haired youth were loudly questioning authority.
As the inevitably self-flattering French story goes, upon its 1967 premier in the U.K., The Prisoner was immediately misunderstood by the "Rosbeefs," who were expecting McGoohan to reprise his hugely popular role as the James Bond-style secret agent John Drake in Danger Man. Instead, The Prisoner felt like a collective hallucination induced by Cold War paranoia.
Like I said, you can watch/download The Prisoner here.
H/T - David Kramer
Iron Maiden The Prisoner, 1982 (VIDEO):
