Living In Harmony

   Living In Harmony is something of a contradiction in terms! A Sheriff resigns his job, handing in both his badge and gun, he told the Judge that the reasons were his reasons. But I think we can hazard a guess.
   So the Sheriff is ambushed on the trail, beaten up and abducted to the frontier town of Harmony, being an 1800’s adaptation of the usual opening sequence to ‘the Prisoner.’
   As I continue my screening of ‘the Prisoner’ to celebrate ‘the Prisoners’ 50^th anniversary, last Saturday it was ‘Living In Harmony.’ My wife said that perhaps watching in black and white might make the episode appear more of a western. I had to agree because many of my favourite American Westerns are in black and white, ‘High Noon’ being very near the top of my list. Marshal Will Kane hands in his badge and gun, as he prepares to retire and leave town with his new bride for Mexico. Well he would have done, had it not been for Frank Miller…… there’s always one last gunfight, one last badman to face down. Kill or be killed! And so it is with a Sheriff who agrees to wear the badge but not the gun. But there’s always that one last gunfight, one last two-bit gunslinger to face down in the street…even if he does beat you to the draw!
   Yes, I enjoyed ‘Living In Harmony’ more this time of watching, because it was in black and white. My wife’s comments were that watching the episode in black and white did make it look more like a Western, and made it more believable. Mind you I know for a fact that she is not looking forward to the next two Saturday night screenings, because then we hit the two week break in transmission of ‘the Prisoner’ while production caught up with the screening of the series in 1968. Instead of ‘the Prisoner’ we’ll be watching ‘Danger Man,’ the two colour episodes {now presented as one film} of ‘Koroshi’ and ‘Shinda Shima,’ but in black and white.

Be seeing you