All Our Yesterdays
Article dated: Tuesday 14 May 2002
The Prisoner

"Who are you calling #26? I am not a number I am a free man." Patrick McGoohan's permanently angry secret agent - number Six, actually - an extension of the character he played in his previous hit series Danger Man, had been drugged and transported to some sort of brainwashing colony after his choleric resignation from British intelligence. There, he had the choice of wandering about in a state of dumb bliss like the rest of the residents, wearing quaint piped blazers and playing human chess, or trying to escape. He opted for the latter, but was forever being re-captured and returned to the Village - Portmeirion, Clough William-Ellis's Italianate folly in North Wales - by a huge white balloon called Rover (you have to remember recreational drugs were just coming into their own around this time). McGoohan's other quest was to find out the identity of the mysterious number One, who if memory serves, after only 17 episodes, was revealed to be McGoohan himself. We are all our own prisoners. Crazy, man.

One of the most fondly remembered and analysed of all TV series, and impossible to do justice in 210 lousy words. Recently remade as - think about it, the permanently sunny fantasy land, the impossibility of escape, characters directed by a tannoy system - The Teletubbies.