The Culture Club

    When you think about it, ‘the Prisoner,’ being all things, contains a good deal of humour, a variety of sports, action and adventure. There's the enigma of the thing, questions, politics, mystery, murder, and alright if you must let it out of its box - the allegorical!

   Yet there is another side to ‘the Prisoner’ - which includes an element of culture. I mean the series contains many quotes from the great Bard Shakespeare himself for one, and his play As you like it  as we are taken through the seven ages of man, well without the love, during ‘Once Upon A Time.’ And then there's Goethe "Du mass amboss oder hammer sein"and Cervantes  Don Quixote "Y mas mas aldea que se suena."

    No.6 is well versed on French revolutionary history, demonstrated during his trial at the ‘Dance of the Dead.’ And history was forced upon him during ‘The General’ you will recall. No.6 enjoys listening to classical music, such as Bizet, and chamber music back in his cottage during Hammer Into Anvil.

   No.6 has enjoyed social gatherings in the past, those such as Madame Engadines celebrated parties in Paris. And he is well versed in phrases and quotations, giving as good as he gets during A Change of Mind, "He who digs a pit will one day lie in it!" and "The Butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart," wherever that one's supposed to come from!

   So, the Prisoner has something for everybody, or indeed everyman as Patrick McGoohan might have put it. But then it all depends on what your particular poison is, and whether or not it was the drink or not!

BCNU