The Prisoner - Old and New | Bradley Robb - Writing That Puts Story First

Two days ago, the world suffered the loss of enigmatic and reserved Irish-American actor Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan is best known for playing the lead in the cult-classic counterculture television series The Prisoner.

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Of course, if one were to be remembered by just one television show, the Prisoner is perhaps as best a choice as any. Ostensibly about a spy who resigned, the Prisoner is a show rife with deeper societal questions – about identity, motivation, individuality, and privacy – not to mention a wealth of symbolism which requires that scenes be studied for analysis.

I would go on, but I have only seen the first episode. I’ve read a great deal about the Prisoner, due in no small part to the debate which surrounds the show 40 years after its completion. Luckily for me, and the internet in general, AMC is rectifying that problem and is currently offering up all 17 episodes of the series online for free.

Of course, the reason AMC is now showing the original series on the internet is because they’re “reimagining” the original Prisoner, dragging it out of the Cold War and into the modern era. Ordinarily, I would balk at something like this, but after Battlestar Galactica, I no longer thing this an impossible task. Just one that’s very difficult to do.
God, I hope they don’t screw this up. Anyhow, here’s Episode 1 of the Prisoner.

And a bit on story – the reason the original series only ran for 17 episodes was because that’s how long the story needed to be. It wasn’t cancelled because of ratings, and perhaps could have been extended. But, the show runners wanted to tell a specific story and knew that a story has a certain length it needs to be. It’s a damn good mentality to have, and one that I wish modern networks would adopt when developing television properties today.

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