On the eve of AMC’s remake of The Prisoner, let us take a moment to look back on the original 1967 series (currently available on DVD, Blu-ray and On Demand). Each episode began with what is still the best opening sequence of any television show to date, predating the music video by 25 years, an entire story told without a line of dialogue:Clouds roil in the sky and we hear the sound of lightning and thunder—and bongos, as a sleek sports car roars down apparently deserted London streets and into an underground parking garage. The driver walks down a dark corridor, the expression on his face one of a man who(in the words of Robin Harris) is pissed off to the highest level of piss-tivity. He storms into an office (that could be M’s) and proceeds to rip the occupant a new one, pacing back and forth and slamming an envelope the desk, pounding his fist. He storms out (and we hear more lightening and thunder), no doubt ending his tirade with “…and the horse you rode in on” and drives away…(Meanwhile a typewriter stamps lines of Xs across a card with his photo. A mechanical arm drops the card in a file drawer labeled “Resigned.”)The sports car pulls up in front of a row of townhouses and the driver jumps out——not noticing a limousine that was already waiting in the next block s-l-o-w-l-y driving forward…He enters the flat and starts packing his bag for a holiday——while outside, a Man in Black s-l-o-w-l-y strides to his door…Too late he notices the gas seeping under his door. The last thing he sees before he looses consciousness is the sleek, ultramodern London skyline…He awakes some time later on a bed in an unfamiliar room. He draws back the curtains to find The Village, a Disneyesque nightmare of a resort. He is told he is Number Six; he responds, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” His declaration in met with evil laughter…
The seventeen episodes of the series all center around the Number Six’s attempts to escape the Village and the attempts by a succession of Number Twos (the Village’s Administrator) to find out why he resigned.My personal favorite episode is “The Schizoid Man,” wherein Number Six awakens to find he is “Number Twelve,” a field agent selected by Headquarters and sent to the Village because of his strong physical resemblance to Number Six. The plan is to break Number Six by making him doubt his sanity. Number Six initially thinks he can make short work of this scheme but discovers that the imposter is a better Number Six than he is. During a confrontation with his Doppelganger, Rover kills the imposter (“Rover” was the malevolent beach ball’s name) and Number Six takes his place. As he boards the helicopter that will take him to freedom Number Two says, “You won’t forget to give Susan my regards?”“I won’t. Goodbye,” Number Six says, putting on a blindfold. The helicopter takes off and lands a short time later; Number Six is quite surprised to discover, when the blindfold is removed, that he’s back in the Village. Number Two simply tells him, “Susan died a year ago, Number Six.”The series holds up remarkably well after nearly half a century, certainly the equal to any of the mythos-dependent series on the air today (Heroes, Lost, Fringe). (Trivia note: While The Prisoner was being filmed at MGM’s legendary London Pinewoods Studios, on an adjacent soundstage Stanley Kubrick was filming 2001: A Space Odyssey.) AMC says the story will be somewhat “changed” to make it “relevant to today’s audience.”Let’s hope that doesn’t mean “dumbed-down.”
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