Kosho

    Although Kosho was originally filmed for ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ because of the actor Basil Hoskins, the apparent Oriental sport appears to be used in ‘It’s Your Funeral’ for filling in time! During Number 6’s semi-weekly Kosho practice, it is the only time during the day when Number 6 is separated from his wristwatch. This so Number 100 can swap the said wristwatch for one identical. Why this could not be accomplished at night when Number 6 is asleep we don’t know. However it would appear in ‘It’s Your Funeral’ we witness all of the bout of Kosho between Number 6 and Number 14.

  Kosho is surreal, and dovetails into the surreal series of ‘the Prisoner’ very well, and was entirely conjured up by Patrick McGoohan. Two men in long red Cossack style garb, wearing crash helmets, and differently coloured boxing mits, with baseball boots rather than deck shoes. The two opponents continually bounce up and down on trampolines, and from one to the other, or run around the three-sided gantry, trying to tip each other, and dunk his opponent into a large tank of water.

    ‘It’s Your Funeral’ presents us with an unanswerable question. Number 2, played by Andre van Gyseghem, has been away on leave. But for how long? Obviously long enough for at least three “interim” Number 2’s to serve in office while he’s been away. And the length of Number 2’s term of office, remains an unknown factor. However long that was, Number 6 had never seen him before, as he doesn’t recognise Number 2 when he pays him a call. A radical thought, or interpretation might be, that Andre van Gyseghem’s Number 2, is the Number 2, and that every Number 2 before him, have all been “interim,” “acting Number 2’s” if you prefer!

    The two “Interim” Number 2’s presented to Number 6 on the wall screen, did they really exist as “interim” Number 2’s, or merely stand-ins conjured by the “interim” Number 2, because we have never seen them before. But certainly they are two look-a-likes for Leo McKern’s Number 2, and that of Mary Morris. Perhaps that is why they were chosen, so that not only Number 6 might recognise their images as former Number 2’s, but also we the viewer! Certainly Number 6 did not denounce the two “Interim” Number 2’s he sees on the screen. He only suggests that the two excerpts had been doctored! But if they had been real Number 2’s, why have we never seen them before in any previous story? Perhaps because there is much which takes place within ‘the Prisoner’ that we do not see. Number 6 is incarcerated in The Village for 15 months, and what we see in the series is but a fraction of that time. Even if the time scale in ‘the Prisoner’ covers 6 or 7 months, that would still leave a further 8 months unaccounted for. That would account for the two “Interim” Number 2’s shown to Number 6, and the idea that there were more to be shown, should Number 6 need to be convinced further.

   Number 2, Andre van Gyseghem, returns to The Village only to retire. A retirement which he will live out in the relative comfort of the Old people’s Home, if my interpretation of the helicopter which at the end of ‘It’s Your Funeral’ turns, bringing the retired Number 2 back to The Village, is correct.

Be seeing you