Patrick McGoohan will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered; but pass away in LA aged 80.
Patrick McGoohan was the man who turned down roles as legendary as James Bond and The Saint to make his own legend, that of Dangerman (that’s Secret Agent to you Yanks), who later became The Prisoner.
Whilst Danger Man was a 60’s UK espionage drama, The Prisoner was a Kafka-esque vision that took McGoohan to iconic status.
The Prisoner featured McGoohan as a spy trapped in a nightmare world called “The Village” where his only hope of escape was to give in to the bureaucracy that wanted information. But Number Six, as he was called, never gave in.
The series was not well received at first, and McGoohan left England for America, later receiving two Emmys for his work in Columbo.
In private, McGoohan was as secretive as his alter-ego, once observing, “I abhor the word star. It makes the hair on the back of my neck want to curl up.”
But the cult status of The Prisoner grew, even causing McGoohan to resurface as “Number Six” in The Simpsons episode “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”.
While many rumors of a new Prisoner film surfaced over the years, McGoohan never returned to Portmeirion, where the Village was filmed.
January 13th, 2009 will be remembered as the day the Prisoner finally broke free. Be seeing you, Number Six.
Source: The Telegraph
Published: Jan 14, 2009 11:35 pm