Throughout The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan and his collaborators have been restless to the point of mania. Any rule they can break in their story of a lone intelligence operative pitted against unknowable and implacable forces, they break, even if it was their own rule to begin with. Episodes with different opening credits. Episodes with no opening credits. Every episode is about escape, until they aren’t. Every episode features Rover and the Announcer, until they don’t. Every episode has a new Number Two, except the ones that reuse old ones. Episodes that begin with twenty minutes of silence. Episodes in which Number Six is a suave secret agent in Paris. Episodes set in the Old West.
Seen in that light, “The Girl Who Was Death” is perhaps The Prisoner‘s boldest experiments yet. It alone dares to ask the question: What if an episode of The Prisoner was really, really stupid?
Stupid like a fox, of course. Working from a script by Terence Feely, director David Tomblin, a pivotal player in The Prisoner‘s production, knows that this screwball Swinging ’60s British super-spy pastiche is silly as hell.
I reviewed the 15th episode of The Prisoner for Pop Heist. Gift link!
Tags: pop heist, prestige prehistory, the prisoner, TV, TV reviews