The Therapy Zone

Patrick McGoohan – A Prisoner Of His Own Secrets

   I can understand what Patrick McGoohan was trying to do with the Prisoner, to make people angry, to get them asking questions instead of sitting in a Zombieonic state watching Coronation Street for example. Of course at the time of the original screening of the Prisoner you either took to it or thought it the biggest load of rubbish out! Well the general public didn't understand it you see, possibly the Prisoner series was too far ahead of its time in that respect. But for those who didn't understand the Prisoner and who thought that all would be explained in the final episode were to be mistaken. and perhaps there are those who thought McGoohan would finally explain exactly what his creation, the Prisoner is all about, with each subsequent interview he has done since. Again people were to be disappointed.

   It has often been said over the decades that the Prisoner asks more questions than it answers, but the answers are there if you take time to look for them, and don't go reading more into the Prisoner than there is. And people really couldn't expect Patrick McGoohan to put the answers on a plate for them, that was not the point of the Prisoner at all.

   If Patrick McGoohan wanted to explain what the Prisoner is all about he has had ample opportunity to do so in the interviews which have been carried out with him. And to be honest McGoohan has given some basic answers and information on the subject of the Prisoner. yet more often than not he has been far more enigmatic and inexplicable about the series he created. "Now you know what its all about" McGoohan once stated. That after explaining nothing at all, well only to his own satisfaction perhaps. And then there was that infamous L.A. tape, an hour long interview with Patrick McGoohan, when at the end of which whilst walking along a Californian beach he finds a wire coat hanger in the sand which he picks up and holds it up as if to say "There's your answer." Pity I cannot remember what the question was in the first place!  I don't know anyone who has bothered to sit through watching all that gumph! Thanks for that Pat, but no thanks! And the same can also be said of the documentary Six Into One - The Prisoner File screened in January 1984 by Channel 4 after the episode Fall Out. This too was supposed to get deep into the mind of the Prisoner and gain the answers to the questions which for years so many fans had been asking. But of course at the end of Six Into one - The Prisoner File no one was much wiser than they had been at the beginning. It was a chance wasted in my opinion, again trying to be far too clever for anybody's good!

    And so in not coming forth with the answers to the questions which fans and members of the media were asking at the time, did Ptrtick McGoohan actually become a Prisoner of his own secrets? Today we know and understand far more about the Prisoner and his village, of why he resigned, who he was, who No.1 is, and why so many different No.2's, which side runs the village and so on. Many, many articles have been written on the subject of the Prisoner, interviews have been carried out with members of both cast and crew who worked on the series, even with those who were only seen on screen for a few seconds, including the late Victor Madden, the leader of the Brass Band in the episode of Hammer Into Anvil. Victor Madden who when asked about his role in that episode, couldn't even remember being in the series.

   So I wonder how things would have been if McGoohan had opened up a little more, and not tried to be that bit too clever for his own good. You never know, he might even have become a "free man" after all this time, well you never know.

Be seeing you.