The Therapy Zone.

    You will be pleased to know that the office is open once again. Yet to say that there have been those who have still needed their daily dose of Prisoner blog over Christamas and Boxing Days, well good for you. And so we contiue as usual here in Therapy Zone.

Patrick McGoohan Before The Prisoner

    I have been asked in the past "Are you a fan of Patrick McGoohan?" Well to be perfectly honest, no I am not, not so much a fan of McGoohan, but rather of his character Danger Man John Drake, and that of the Prisoner, as he became after he had resigned.

   However despite having said that I am not a fan of Patrick McGoohan, I have enjoyed his acting in other roles, as Jones for example in the film Ice Station Zebra, probably because McGoohan's Jones is on a parallel with his character of Drake! Then there's the Columbo episode with Peter Falk, Identity Crisis. This episode was made not too long after the Prisoner, and I think that McGoohan had still not got the Prisoner out of his system by this time. This because of his using the phrase "Be Seeing you" "Well, I'll be seeing you." Plus he wears an anorak similar to the one he wore during The Chimes of Big Ben.

    The film Silver Streak is another McGoohan film I like, but before that there's Hell Drivers, as he plays Red, a real tough foreman keeping the rest of the lorry drivers in line. And there's the 1950's BBC play This Day In Fear in which McGoohan plays Irishman James Coogan, who is really an ex-IRA man who betrayed them, and who is now up for execution. A quite brilliant play. I did have occasion to see part of McGoohan's Brand, but I fell asleep, at that point Patrick McGoohan was ranting on about something, and when I woke up half an hour later he was still ranting one, it was like I had not missed any of the play. I hasten to say that I did not take against Brand because of McGoohan, whose performance as Brand was not even enough to keep me awake, but because Ibsen's plays are dark and depressing.

   To end there is All Night Long in which McGoohan plays a Jazz musician Johnny Cousin, the leader of a small Jazz band, which I found entertaining, not only because of the acting, but for the Jazz the music in its own right. And The Man In The Iron Mask, in which McGoohan plays Fouquet, but not wholly because of McGoohan, as I like costume dramas anyway, and The Man In The Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas is a particular favourite of mine, as is Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which McGoohan isn't in, but Rosalie Crutchley who was the white Queen in Checkmate, is!

BcNu