Not a number….
RIP Patrick McGoohan, not just the star of The Prisoner, but one of its writers and creators too. He was not a number.
I like to think I'm not one to dustily break out the nostalgia salts over television, and believe that in many respects, once you ignore the repellent "lifestyle" shite that clogs the airwaves, we're living in a bit of a golden era of telly drama if you look out for it. Dr Who, The Wire, The Street, Dexter, Spooks, House, Shameless........well they kept me occupied in the last year anyway.
I do worry and wonder however, if anything as downright weird as The Prisoner would be commisioned today. McGoohan and co melded the action spy genre to modernism and surrealism, Kafka and Magritte, in what was supposedly a mainstream popular pot-boiler. Whatever you might think of its success rate - almost perfect though it is to my mind - what an amazingly precocious and audacious project! And its hard to think of an equivalent in terms of sheer mad imagination today. For better or worse , watching this disturbed programme (the repeats of the early 90s by the way, I'm not that old) and Lynch's Twin Peaks left a massive impression on my early-teen mind, helping thrash my young imagination into weird new shapes, making me think about the frightening things both television and life itself had to offer.
So, RIP McGoohan, and long live your desecendant. I don't see him or her yet, but I'm sure they will come.....
