Television Treasures

e the schene, a man drives his Lotus Seven sports car at speed through the streets of London.

Music blasts from the screen and asaults your ears, you know that something dramatic is about to happen. He enters a building and storms purposefully down an empty corridor. Where is he going in such a hurry and why does he look so angry?

The man enters an office and has a blazing row with another man in a suit.

These are the opening scenes from one of the most interesting and mysterious shows ever to be seen on television, The Prisoner.

The Priisoner ran for 17 episodes and yet is so influencial and lasts so well in our collective memory that a revisioning, a new version has been commisioned and will be shown within the next few dayts on our screens.

What was the show about? For me it was about personal honour, duty and responsibility as well as the preservation of an individual's rights regardless of the job that he or she does.

Number six as he became known was a spy, someone who knew lots of information and also knew about the frailties of his fellow man and that even though administrations and priorities may change, he needed to hang on to his moral code regardless of who his boss might be or what this person required him to do.

The show was also about loyalty, whose side are you on was a common question, we never knew for sure whether the Village,Tthe Prisoner's guilded cage was run by an enemy power or The Prisioner's own employers. This uncertainty gave great scope for dramatic writing as The Village officials were reluctant to damage The Prisoner, maybe because they had other tasks for him to perform once they had found out why he had resigned at the top of the show. did this prove that in the end they were on he same side? We will never know.

Patrick Mc Goohan the creator and star of the series was intentionally vague about the matters discussed above and so delivered a final episode which posed more questions than it answered. Fall Out was a story with little structure and even less reolution. Mr Mc Goohan both wrote and directed this installment, so we can be pretty certain that what we see, is exactly what he wanted us to see.

At the end the Prisoner our hero escapes to his old home and yet, the door closes electronically, just as the replica had in The Village version of his home. he is also joined by the diminutive Butler who had previously only been seen serving Number Two, the chief officer of the oppresive Village regime. What does this mean, has The Prisioner finally lost his mind or is this symbolism, to let us all know that we two are Prisoners in a much larger Village. One where our apparent control of our lives is every bit as much of an illusion as the Community of the Village in the Prisoner is hroughout the series?