The Prisoner!

Danger Man is on Amazon Prime, surprisingly entertaining for a b&w series that debuted in 1960 (McGoohan secret-agenting well before the Bond movies)

in the last week or two The Prisoner also showed up as included on Amazon Prime -- I'm looking forward to seeing it in order for the first time

he's the warden in escape from alcatraz!!

yeah I noticed this on Amazon Prime and just watched a couple eps (Free for All and Checkmate)

imagining the Prisoner at a diner

Waitress: What would you like this morning?
Number 6: To mind my own business.

xp McGoohan adds some much-needed tension to Ice Station Zebra, basically reprising his Danger Man role

is there a more menacing orb in television or cinema than Rover

Danger Man is way more "sophisticated" than I had expected when I first watched it about a decade ago ... there are a few episodes that prefigure the Prisoner.

Rover reinforces my antipathy to balloons ... best menacing orb

imo he's great in almost everything he's done. Dunno if this was posted already - All Night Long is a good film with McGoohan stealing the show as a treacherous jazz drummer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl5p80BMHYk

very sinister drum solo

that tune sounds kind of like the Danger Man theme

don't forget Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend

He's also on Hell Drivers, the cast of which is o_O - a doctor who, a James bond, Sid James, a Professional, a man from uncle, a ladykiller, Alfie bass...

He's in at least 4 Columbos and brilliant in every one.

yep, 4 - he directed three of those and co-wrote one, and directed another two that he's not in


(just recently watched the first two regular TV Columbos with the aim of skipping ahead to the McGoohans & occasional other ones of interest, eg two directed by Nicholas Colsanto, the Coach from Cheers, one of those starring Johnny Cash)

wow, Johnny Cash with Ida Lupino as his wife. will have to track down.

It's on every other week in the UK.

Columbo is on top form in it.

just went through this series again since first watching it about fifteen years ago. it's so good, but how did i forget how much full bore insanity makes up the last episode???? my goodness, it goes on for about twenty straight minutes of nonsense for a while there.

by the way, you can find the whole series on youtube (in sometimes *ahem* "vintage" quality, but alas it's there). also, this is a cool interview. he seemed like a really intense person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95DrM4tfyD0

Watched it front to back properly for the first time this year. Amazing period piece on several levels, and the sheer brilliance of turning a weather balloon into a horrific threat solely through sound and editing is next level.

I did similar, the blu ray box has a few documentaries, the best one with Patrick McGoohans um involvement. It’s brilliant.

Yeah, it’s called “in my mind” it’s available separately and well worth seeing.

anybody tried rewatching it in one of the "alternate" episode orders?

Never tried it but some of the episodes are obviously (and annoyingly) in the wrong place

in my preparation to rewatch in one of the alternate orders, i found that the entire thing is on shout factory in hd: https://www.shoutfactorytv.com/series/the-prisoner

This is a fun early lockdown-era interview with Steven Moffat about The Prisoner

https://www.tvcream.co.uk/podcasts/tv-cream-stays-indoors/tv-cream-stays-indoors-with-steven-moffat/

It’s particularly enjoyable for his valiant (although I think completely wrong!) takedown of the finale

oh man, this show. my Dad ordered the VHS tapes when I was 12 and we watched them together. we never really bonded over a TV show before. tbh I was still in that phase where I took entertainment a bit too seriously and was a bit miffed at all the "this doesn't really make sense to us either" moments.

fun story the company I work for won a big "Best Place to Work" award and there was some local TV station doing a feature on us. at one point during the day they were interviewing random employees and I got the "why do you think this company has such a low turnover rate?" question. I answered "well if anyone quits they find themselves followed by a giant white balloon on their drive home and as soon as they get out of the car they blackout and wake up under their desk". they wound up not airing that response :(

The 'Free For All' podcast is worth checking out, and yes, it is two guys theorizing and repurposing what they've researched but they're interesting and speak like normal humans.

There is an interview with Derrin Nesbitt coming up which could be good and the format suggests that they're going to stop after having done all 17 episodes.