Original subtitles

(thunderclap)

- [Narrator's voice echoing] It was like a dream.

A dream that had become fabulous reality.

Here I am in America for the very first time in 1983,

on a mission to get an interview with Patrick McGoohan

about his groundbreaking television series, The Prisoner.

A dream, because the series had changed my life

back in 1968 when it was first shown in Britain.

A dream that you almost never get: to meet your heroes.

A dream, because an infant Channel 4 Television

in London had commissioned a documentary about its making.

A dream, because I knew nothing about

making television programmes.

With the help of a director, this would be my first.

McGoohan had always declined to be interviewed

about his masterwork, but for some reason,

he'd responded positively to a two-page begging letter

from me to consider talking about it...

On camera.

This is the story of what happened on that trip.

Archives have been raided, unseen interviews excavated; memories

long since repressed, some for good reason,

have finally escaped.

35 years later, McGoohan's daughter Catherine

has helped me to understand

much of what I didn't realise back then.

But like father like daughter, it pays to be guarded

when talking to people who want information.

Information, information...

- I took my time to think about whether I should do this.

Because as you know, he rarely gave interviews.

But what I feel, is what he couldn't say about himself,

maybe I can say for him.

So that's sort of where I'm at,

and he deserves it.

- [Number Six] I've resigned, 1 will not be pushed, filed,

stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.

- [Narrator] Santa Monica, California.

McGoohan had agreed to meet us on neutral ground:

The Huntley Hotel.

I recognised the building immediately

from the exterior elevator -

a significant feature in John Boorman's

gangster movie, Point Blank.

The film's baddie lived here in the penthouse suite.

In reality, this was, and still is, a bar.

McGoohan's chosen rendezvous point.

Not so blank, not so neutral.

(clanging of prison doors)

I imagined him arriving at the Huntley's

underground carpark, determined, angry even,

and with a list of demands written on a letter

ready to be slammed on our table.

(Village horn fanfare)

Suddenly, he was there.

McGoohan did have demands.

We must not interview certain people

under any circumstances.

We should definitely interview others.

Demands that we couldn't guarantee.

We failed our first audition, but McGoohan

did put us on callback...

and then he left.

I already felt like a defeated Number Two

trying to persuade McGoohan to tell us

his version of the Prisoner story.

Something that was very personal to him.

I just didn't realise how personal.

He wasn't going to simply cooperate with us.

When had he ever done that?

- [Number Two] Let's make a deal.

You cooperate, tell us what we want to know.

This can be a very nice place.

- [Number Six] I will not make any deals with you.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed,

briefed, debriefed or numbered.

My life is my own.

- [Narrator] Was Number Six referring to his fictional life,

or to the real life of his creator?

McGoohan's daughter Catherine thinks it's both.

- When I revisited The Prisoner many years afterwards,

I had missed a very important detail.

And when I saw it in that opening episode, Arrival,

I went, "Oh, my God."

- The time of my birth is missing.

- His personal birthdate.

- 4:31 AM, 19th of March, 1928.

I have nothing to say; is that clear?

- He was not playing a character.

Oh, he was playing the character of Number Six.

But that's 100 per cent personal.

- [Narrator] In 1983, without the benefit of either

the internet or YouTube, I wasn't to know

that McGoohan had already spoken about The Prisoner

on television in 1977.

TV Ontario in Canada had successfully lured

him into the studio, along with a small audience

of students studying The Prisoner at university level.

Asking the questions, someone called Warner Troyer.

Answering them, angry Patrick.

- We're run by the Pentagon.

We're run by Madison Avenue,

we're run by television,

and as long as we accept those things,

and don't revolt, we'll have to go along with the stream.

I think it's going on every day, all around us.

I had to sign in to get into this joint.

- [Troyer] Mmhmm.

- Downstairs, yeah.

- [Troyer] Make you angry too?

- Slightly, yes, yes. - (laughing) Right?

- There are pass-keys, you know, "Let's go down to the basement”

and all this, that's prisonership as far as I'm concerned,

and that makes me mad, and that makes me rebel,

and that's what The Prisoner was doing,

was rebelling against that type of thing.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Our next rendezvous was at Santa Monica Pier,

to talk about how we might do our interview

for British television.

I thought McGoohan was just running us around town,

trying to keep us off guard.

Now I know the simple truth,

thanks to Catherine.

- This is a place that he often went to.

He loved this view, he loved this area,

he would walk along here,

and he would take in the sights, and he really

enjoyed living here.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Was it the sand, the sea,

or the sights on that day, that calmed

McGoohan's troubled mind?

All I know was that he finally agreed

to stop running, and start talking.

To give us what we wanted.

Information about The Prisoner.

(haunting music)

(maniacal laughter echoing)

(Village horn fanfare)

- [Village Announcer] Good morning, good morning, good morning,

and what a lovely day it is again.

(soft jazz music)

- [Narrator] It was a lovely morning that day.

The big day; the day of the interview.

This time, we rendezvoused in Laurel Canyon.

McGoohan arranged to meet us somewhere in these hills,

exactly where, I don't remember now.

He had access to an empty house, where we could shoot

and not be disturbed.

(music continues)

I knew that he didn't really want to do this,

but for some reason, he'd agreed.

Looking back at the footage now,

it's far more revealing than I remember.

- [McGoohan] How many tapes have you got?

Lot of tapes, aren't there?

So we can keep going as much as we want?

- [Narrator] Okay, I'm ready. (laughs)

- What, but-- Are you ready?

Come on, then.

(laughter) I'm the one that's scared.

- [Narrator] Me too.

- Well, come on then.

Well, you're smiling a lot, that's all right.

- [Narrator] Actually, can I just...

- You can't see me yet, can you?

Just sort of, see if it's possible to relax at all.

Oh, well, I take a look, walk over from the fireplace,

I look down there, there's the camera and I

have a look at you all, and say: "All set?"

All right.

Shoot.

- [Narrator] I started by asking him about Lord Grade.

- Lord Grade?

Lew Grade?

He was Lew then, before he was

er... No.

Start again, sorry.

It's too cute.

Too cute, don't like it.

Once more, same way.

- [Narrator] I didn't know what I could do

to make the whole thing easier.

- All right, let's, uh...

Shoot.

- [Narrator] I asked again about Lew Grade,

but again, he didn't like his answer.

- Let's start again.

Start again.

- [Narrator] Okay, cut!

Cut, Chuck!

- Same way, right away, please.

All right there, then... All set?

- [Narrator] How could you tell Patrick McGoohan to relax?

He didn't do relaxed.

- (sighing) Shoot.

- [Narrator] For a third time, Lord Grade.

- Lord Grade.

He was Lew Grade at that time,

and I had been doing a number of TV plays,

a whole string of them, in the days when they were live,

in other words, when it said in the studio,

"Vision on", you were exposed to the millions,

or however many that were watching, and if you made

a mistake, you didn't have the privilege of going

back and picking it up and correcting it, so

it was very exciting, good for the adrenaline.

One of the plays that I did was a play called

The Big Knife, by Clifford Odets,

in which I played an ageing movie star.

And Lew Grade saw it, and at the time they were

looking for someone to be in a new series that they

were preparing called Danger Man.

(Danger Man theme)

[Patrick McGoohan: voiceover] Every government has its Secret Service branch.

America, it's CIA, France, Deuxieme Bureau,

England, MI5.

A messy job? Well, that's when they usually call on me, or

someone like me.

Oh, yes, my name is Drake.

John Drake.

(dramatic crescendo)

The first script I got had a sequence in it

where I was lying on a bed,

and there was a young lady lying beside me on the bed -

on the bed - and there was a piece in the plot

where I had to get at a very pertinent document...

There was a picture behind the bed,

and behind the picture was a safe with a combination,

and in the script, it said that I rolled over

on top of the girl, and said "Excuse me",

in order to work the picture across, get at the

combination, and find the document.

Then read the secrets contained therein.

So I mentioned that this didn't seem to be

a particularly good idea,

it'd be better without,

and, er... in fact we didn't do that.

Nor did we ever do anything like that again.

- [Narrator] If that particular scene was never shot,

many others involving women spies and characters were.

McGoohan was in at the birth of what was later termed

the Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang genre.

The age of the handsome, callous secret agent.

But he obviously had a very different moral compass.

- During this time, Bond came along.

And he had been offered that character, that role.

And he had turned it down, for the same reasons

that he didn't like the character in John Drake.

He felt that it was a very stereotypic, Bond-like character,

that was... a womaniser,

carried a gun, and shot people.

(gunshot)

He didn't want to play someone that was full of himself,

I can tell you that.

He was good looking,

but it wasn't just his looks.

You knew that he was always thinking, and you could

always see in a scene, he was always

working things out.

(urgent music)

He also moved very, very well, in fact, Lew Grade

described it that he moved like a panther.

(growling of a panther)

He was firm and decisive.

Other people have described it as, he was defiant

in every way.

- He can make even the act of putting on his dressing gown

appear as a gesture of defiance.

- I thought that it was proper to do things which

were not offensive, on the television at that time.

Now, of course, they have everything.

The sky's the limit.

But at that time I thought if they wanted to

go out and see something salacious,

they could go to a movie theatre that provided

that sort of fare, come home and watch

whatever good clean stuff was going on at the time

at home, you know?

That was the general idea anyway, you know.

There's a lot of stuff that's been talked about,

the fact that I'm a prude and I don't believe

in sex and violence and all this sort of nonsense,

well, anyone who says that should go and see a movie

called The Gypsy and the Gentleman, where I

threshed around in the hay with Melina Mercouri for a considerable

amount of time, and another one, I can't remember the

name of it, it was awful, where I had a to rape

the young Canadian girl, but that wasn't for the telly,

as they say.

(water splashing and metal clanging)

(thud of fist on face)

(rustling of clothing)

(romantic music)

- Don't leave me, Jess.

I tried to give you everything.

(romantic music)

- [Narrator] By now, the interview was going well.

Patrick was relaxing, and so was I.

- Just repeat that question to me while (background shout)

they're fixing it.

- [Narrator] But the local crew were constantly

having technical problems that I didn't understand.

Nor did Patrick.

- Chuck?

- I started to feel that we were letting him down,

that this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

was slipping through our inept fingers.

That's when McGoohan took control.

- How would you feel about a little stretch of the legs? Hmm?

Would you be kind enough to follow me in here?

- [Narrator] He was now directing us.

As he literally started to call the shots.

- Shall we stretch our legs?

If you'll follow me...

They're all ready?

- [Narrator] He was creating his own sequence,

moving the cameraman, and us, from room to room,

to room.

- This is all too muddy, let's start over,

not use this at all, we'll do another lot.

Still rolling? - [Crew] Keep rolling, yes.

- [McGoohan] Keep rolling?

You still rolling?

Let's go, no, let's go.

- [Narrator] Finally, we were getting to the target.

The Prisoner was in our sights.

- I felt like doing something else,

and I looked for something else to do,

and I had, of course, something at the back of my mind,

and that's why we're here, isn't it?

(thunderclap)

(The Prisoner theme music begins)

The general theme of The Prisoner has been with me

for years, since I was a little boy,

being brought up in a very strict, religious household.

Going to school with strict schoolmasters.

- Society.

- Yes, sir?

- Society is a place where people exist together.

- Yes, sir.

The individual little boy,

any little boy up against this sort of a pressure.

- You must conform! - Yes, sir.

- Itis my sworn duty to see that you do conform.

- Yes sir.

And the slight isolation in it, and that's what

the theme of The Prisoner is, the individual

in revolt against the bureaucracy.

(police sirens wailing)

And it's always been with me,

and I suppose in some respect that sort of rebellion

is in everyone, isn't it, in one way or another?

It came to fruition, I had done lots of writing

on that theme, nothing to do with The Prisoner,

but I got the idea of crystallising it, on the first

two weeks of location we did on the 39 half hours

of Danger Man.

We're in North Wales, and we had to shoot a sequence

at a place called Portmeirion, and I remember

I was driving an Aston Martin car down this little street

into this village, the like of which I'd never seen,

certainly in the British Isles,

and it was like driving into sunny Italy.

(dreamlike, uplifting music)

I stood there in wonderment, and when we'd done

the sequence, I found out that the place had been

designed by a gentleman by the name of

Clough Williams-Ellis.

I got together with him, talked about it,

and he told me it was his dream.

Basically designed after Portofino,

and I wandered around, and there were pieces of all

sorts of sculpture from all over the world,

anything, Chinese, Greek, you name it.

It was there.

And I thought, how strange it hadn't been used

as a setting for a film, or something of that nature.

- [Archive film narration] Swimming or sailing or sitting

and sunning, if you dream of lazy days and lazy ways

of having fun, if you long for the romance

and charm of old Italy, to to Wales.

That's it, go to Wales; to North Wales,

to be exact, to Merionethshire, where

Portmeirion nestles beside Tremadog bay,

as though it were the Mediterranean.

A man's dream transformed it into this warm

Mediterranean village that so surprises the eye

prepared for snowy peaks and lush green valleys.

A man's dream transformed the coastline that

is now Portmeirion.

Slowly, it became a piece of Italy,

slowly the dream became fabulous reality.

- It could be the miles of beach, and the ocean.

It could be an island, it could be...

a village.

Anywhere in the world.

Isolated.

And I began cooking on my original little

isolation theme set within that place, and of course I talked

to people about it, particularly David Tomblin,

who was the First Assistant Director on all those

Danger Man episodes, and it developed

and it developed and it developed, until such time as some

scribbling was done,

and Danger Man finished, and, er... what happened next?

- [Archive film narration] Perfection here combines with practicality.

Here is an hotel and a town hall, and garages and shops.

(lush, serene orchestral music)

You imagine togaed Romans strolling beneath

these classical colonnades.

You imagine yourself an ocean away from Wales,

but then Portmeirion is famed for firing imaginations.

Literary imaginations, in particular, have thrived here.

- When my father saw Portmeirion,

he went, "Oh, okay."

(calm, atmospheric music)

You had this place that could've been anywhere in the world,

that was surreal,

that was another world, that was a Neverland.

(calm, gently rhythmic music)

I know for my mother it's a place she can go to

for a couple of days and then

for some reason, there's a sense of uneasiness.

(sinister sting)

But he knew how to use that.

And I'm sure he felt the same the first time he was there

(unearthly, eerie music and camera shutter clicks)

You just want to get out.

- What happened to the scribbles was that I went to see

Lew Grade and said, all right,

shall we sort of say, enough Danger Man?

(pounding of typewriter keys)

- He said, "Come on, Pat, let's keep going",

you know, "We're doing well here, everybody loves you.

"Let's keep making it", and he said "No.

"I'm done."

- He asked me would I do anything else?

And I said, well, you know, I do happen to have

a little idea in my mind, and a few little notes

on it, and took my briefcase, opened it,

and took out quite a huge wad of stuff,

you know, sort of, this thick.

In here, Lew got (clearing throat) an outline

for a story, thing, a setting here, here, here,

and descriptions of things.

I think he became somewhat alarmed when he saw

all these pages going by, and said, "Pat,

"why don't you just tell me about it for a while?"

- So Lew Grade was not very good at reading material,

he kind of wanted to be told and shown.

And so my father gave him the premise.

Okay, what if... What if, not necessarily John Drake,

but a character like John Drake, wants to retire?

What happens if he's not allowed?

(atmospheric piano music)

- He listened, until I'd finished, I sat down,

then he got up, puffed on his cigar, marched around

a little bit,

then he turned on me and said "Pat, you see,

"it's so crazy, it might work.

"When can we start?"

(ominous music)

- [Narrator] McGoohan's concept for The Prisoner

wasn't an easy fit for television, even in the confident,

experimental atmosphere of late '60s Britain.

(distorted sitar music)

Just how inconvenient his initial concept was

is something he had revealed in his Canadian interview

in 1977.

- You didn't initially want to do 17 films?

- No, seven.

As a serial, as opposed to a series.

I thought that the concept of the thing would sustain

for only seven.

But then Lew Grade wanted to make his sale.

And he wanted 26, and I couldn't conceive of 26 stories,

because it would be spreading it very thin.

But we did manage over a weekend, with my writers

to cook up 10 more outlines, and then eventually we did

17, but it should be seven.

At the time, what was selling very well

was Danger Man, for instance.

Action adventure stuff.

But the thing about Lew Grade was that he was

not limited in his thinking.

He had a broad concept of life,

and he was willing.

(up-tempo music)

I said, of course, there'll be a little action adventure,

in The Prisoner too, most of it in the mind, but

there'll be some,

but then he said, he just said go.

You see, he has an instinct, he has a feeling for something,

he lives on instinct.

- I think Lew liked the danger,

and he liked taking a gamble too,

I mean, he was a business man,

but he like taking a gamble.

And he totally took a gamble on The Prisoner.

- From the very moment that he said go,

and shook my hand, we never had a contract,

he never interfered in anything that I did,

never bothered me.

- [Narrator] Whatever difficulties both Patrick

and we were experiencing in trying to film an interview

about The Prisoner, and despite even bigger difficulties

that were waiting for us just around the corner,

he did something very kind.

He called Lew, now Lord Grade, in London, about

doing an interview for us.

I like to think that he told Lew to do it,

rather than asked.

That's the Patrick McGoohan we all loved.

- Somebody once asked me, "How d'you get on with

"Pat McGoohan?"

I said, "Very easily, I have no problems with him at all."

"Well, how do you do it?"

I said "I just give in to him."

I left it entirely in his hands, I was

absolutely contented.

I knew that they had a project in mind,

I loved the concept of it,

I loved the locale, and most important,

I thought Pat McGoohan was a star in whatever

he appeared.

I thought he had a remarkable talent.

He was an outstanding personality.

He was the best leading man we had in the country

at that time.

- There was certainly an intensity about him.

He never compromised himself.

And that, I think, is the way he led his life.

A lot of the times, I think he putin a lot of pressure

on himself sometimes, and the people around him.

I think sometimes when you've got these ideas,

and these thoughts, and you know things,

it's sometimes hard to live in the world.

When you see what's going on, and I think

in that respect, there was a sense of isolation.

At periods of time, I'm not saying all the way through.

(Village horn fanfare)

- [Village Announcer] Good morning again!

- Can we go tighter on it,

and then we just exclude that.

Let's go tighter on it, we'll be here all night.

Okay, check a frame on this please, Mike, so that you

exclude all that.

We just don't have it.

We got it?

‘Cause we cut back to the other shot anyway,

so let's do it. This next time.

- [Narrator] By now, it was dark outside.

- [McGoohan] Hope so. - [Narrator] It was dark inside, too.

But Patrick perservered.

With a film crew obviously not up to the job in hand.

In fact, he seemed to become increasingly determined

to have his say.

Next question: "You wrote and directed several

"episodes of The Prisoner, sometimes under made-up names.

"Did your role as Executive Producer on the series

"enable you to keep better control of it?"

- The control and the overall look of the thing

had nothing to do with the title of Executive Producer.

Since I had cooked up the idea, I guess that

they referred back to me if they wanted

to know what was going to happen next.

What was the intention of it all, what was the direction

of it all, what did it mean, and all that sort of stuff.

So the titles had nothing to do with it.

I didn't sort of ask for the Executive Producer role

at all, it was sort of pushed upon me because the lads

sort of said, "Well, you'd better put your name up there as something",

and I didn't have it up there

as the creator, so you'd better stick it up there,

something to do with the other side of production,

as opposed to just acting in it and doing the odd

bit of directing and writing.

- When The Prisoner started, they had this concept,

it was a concept show, and it was very clearly thought out.

None of this was an accident.

And I think my father had written something like

a 40-page outline of everything. Wardrobe.

Sets.

The phones.

The blazers.

But imagine being the director or a writer,

coming onto a show like that, and understanding

immediately what everyone is going for.

So it was important to my father to keep the concept

intact, and to not veer off,

and the last thing that he wanted was to have

just another secret agent show.

So in a way he had to be involved in every aspect of it,

because it was in his mind.

(laughter)

(quietly ominous music)

- [McGoohan] The look of it, yes, going back to the beginning

of the concept of the man in isolation against

the establishment, against the bureaucracy, the best

place to put him is in an area of isolation,

whether an island or a remote village somewhere

in the world.

Then it was best to get down to basics and say

this village; what is this village like?

Well, we knew what it was like architecturally

because we were using Portmeirion.

Then we sort of decided to think about what was

the plumbing like, did it have a newspaper,

if it had a newspaper, what was the newspaper called?

Electricity, television, what communication system?

(Village horn fanfare)

Transport, all that, we worked it out as if researching

how one would build a city.

- [Narrator] In the real world, Portmeirion

was a holiday resort.

So when location shooting on The Prisoner began

in September 1966, the streets were still full

of tourists.

One of them shot the filming of the first episode, Arrival,

at close range, capturing exactly what was being shot by the production.

(dreamlike music)

(whirring)

(engine revving and tyres screeching)

- Where to, sir?

Ou desirez-vous aller?

- Take me to the nearest town.

- [Taxi driver] Oh, we're only the local service.

- Take me as far as you can.

Why did you speak to me in French?

- French is international.

- [Number Six] I suppose it's a waste of time

asking the name of this place?

- As a matter of fact, I thought you might

be Polish, perhaps a Czech.

- [Number Six] What would Poles or Czechs be doing here?

- It's very cosmopolitan.

You never know who you meet next.

(whimsical music)

(tyres screeching)

Be seeing you.

(roar of engine)

- Quite honestly, it's almost as if there is

no Prisoner without Portmeirion.

And vice versa.

They would've come up with something,

and they would've had to have probably built something

from scratch.

I don't know if they would've gone to a location.

(suspenseful music)

(musical phrase repeats)

Clough, the architect,

he had only just finished building it.

It was actually maybe still in the process

of being completed when they started filming.

But I can honestly say to you,

I believe it was built for The Prisoner.

(suspenseful percussive music)

- Lovely day.

- Showers later.

- Lovely day.

- Showers later.

(suspenseful music)

- Careful sir, they're new plants.

- (hushed) Sorry.

Goodbye.

- [McGoohan] With regard to the Penny Farthing...

brought images to my mind of a very elegant period.

If you remember those old etchings

with the Penny Farthing and the gentleman

beautifully dressed, seated atop

the big one of the two - the Penny -

wearing a top hat, moustached, all this sort of thing,

and the fine patent-leather shoes on those wheels,

and it was an era of elegance.

And the Penny Farthing was used to symbolise

progress, which was an ironic comment, I hope,

on the fact that progress perhaps

goes too fast for us sometimes, and we're not

able to catch up with it.

(playful, slow-paced jazz)

- [Narrator] It had been a long, nerve-jangling day.

Finally, Patrick led us to the empty, cavernous

living room of this mysterious house.

It felt like an abandoned film set,

where he could play his final scene in slow retreat,

and at a safe distance.

But why had all this been so difficult for him,

and for us?

- He was embarrassed to talk about it and to take

credit for everything.

- [McGoohan - echoing] I'm the one that's scared.

- And again it goes back to not wanting to talk

too much about himself.

- [McGoohan - echoing] Just, sort of, see if it's possible to relax at all...

- And not explaining too much

about the meaning of this or that.

He felt... - [McGoohan - echoing] Shoot.

- ...the work spoke for itself, and it was left

for individual interpretation.

- [McGoohan - echoing] Any more explaining to do?

Come on.

- He didn't care for actors talking about themselves.

He thought it was very indulgent.

And he also didn't believe that actors

should give away their secrets.

- [Narrator] I didn't know that then.

I do now.

- [McGoohan] We'll have to ask Chris.

Have to ask Chris.

Why was that?

- [Narrator] By the time it came to talking about

The Prisoner's infamous final episode, Fall Out,

McGoohan was in full sarcastic mode.

He was enjoying teasing us, testing us...

tormenting us.

- [McGoohan] Religious?

What was religious in the last episode?

Religious?

We what?

Purgatory was in it?

Where was that?

(alarm blaring) # Ezekiel cracked dem dry bones

# Now, hear the word of the Lord.

# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones

# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones

# Ezekiel connected dem dry bones Now, hear the word of the Lord... #

What? Did it?

Really? Oh.

Well... (clearing throat)

it was nice talking to you.

I suppose.

Sure there's nothing else?

Is there anything, any more explaining to do?

Come on.

Must be.

I can't think of anything else, either.

If (clearing throat), perchance, you have

understood anything at all about this... er...

Oh, yes, indeed, if perchance you have understood...

They're pointing at me, those chaps up there...

...anything at all about this,

it, er... (clearing throat)

will, er... profoundly disappoint me,

because I've done my best to confuse you.

But, you know, we'll, we'll keep trying, won't we?

Be seeing you.

- [Narrator] It was over. (door shuts)

To reward ourselves for surviving,

we drove into the Mojave Desert the very next day.

Along the highway, relaxing resorts with names like

1000 Hot Springs, and Desert Hot Springs.

Our mistake is that we never once looked back.

Our little road trip ended right here,

in this remote desert hotel.

We were in this very room, when the phone rang.

It was McGoohan. (bleeping)

He was already here, waiting for us, someplace nearby.

I'll never know how he found us.

But I do remember his last words.

- [McGoohan - echoing] Be seeing you.

- [Narrator] We met; he'd changed his mind.

He took out his chequebook and signed a blank cheque.

How much did we want to hand all the footage back?

We couldn't.

We needed the interview, or we had no film.

At last, we reached a compromise.

We agreed to do the entire interview all over again.

That's why the material filmed in that mysterious

empty house in Laurel Canyon has never been seen before.

I should've reminded myself that this was the same Patrick McGoohan

who had wowed theatre audiences in 1959

with a blistering performance in Ibsen's play, Brand.

Brand, an uncompromising priest, a man with such

high moral standards, that few people lived up

to his expectations.

A man made lonely by his own all-or-nothing philosophy.

That was the McGoohan Brand.

- [Catherine] Sometimes a role comes along,

and you have the writing, you have the character,

and you have the actor, and it just fits perfectly,

and it's almost as if the material was written for you.

And I think in this case, that was true.

I was lucky enough to see it.

I can hear him right now, actually.

I can still hear his voice.

- [McGoohan] Jesus, give me light.

- And I still remember him striding across the stage.

Calling out, to God, trying to

because... trying to get an answer.

- Unrepentant as she had lived,

Is not this God's finger pointing?

If I weaken now, I am damned tenfold!

Henceforth, I shall fight unflinchingly

for the victory of the spirit over the weakness

of the flesh!

The Lord has armed me with the blade of His word!

Now I stand firm in my will, now I dare, now I can,

crush mountains!

- Put your affairs in order and leave this place.

If the Earth were to tremble I should still remain!

- It was just so powerful.

Peter Sallis was in it with him,

and he said that when he was onstage with my father

and he looked him in the eye,

he realised that he may never see a performance

like this again.

The fact that he was so volatile, and he was...

driven.

He was direct.

He had a purpose.

The undeniable purpose,

and a passion.

And I think all those elements were very much

in Number Six.

- If you insist on living a dream,

you may be taken for mad.

- I like my dream.

- Then you are mad.

This is your world.

I am your world.

(playful keyboard music)

- [Narrator] Our last rendezvous, Patrick's Roadhouse,

on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

I assumed that this was another piece of McGoohan mischief.

This was his place, his life, and his story.

We talked again about how this day should go.

Inside, I noticed the joke menu.

"Two choices: Take it, or leave it."

Obviously, that was going to be the Special of the Day.

We followed Patrick up into the Hollywood Hills,

high above the smog that squatted on the city

that was now his home.

This is where he wanted to relax and speak.

This time, about the team that helped him

to realise his dream.

(The Prisoner theme)

- [Number Six] Where am 1?

- [Number Two] In the Village.

(sprightly symphonic music)

(buzzing of door)

(sinister chiming)

- [McGoohan] David Tomblin, we'd become great friends

on the Danger Man thing, he was First Assistant Director on that.

And then I needed him closer to me when we started

doing The Prisoner so he, in fact, produced it

and co-supervised the scripts with George Markstein,

who was brought in as Script Supervisor.

- [Number Six] Who are you?

- [MacGoohan] Then, of course, there was Bernard Williams,

who was our Production Manager, and an extraordinary young man

He has gone on to much bigger and better things,

I hope; he worked for Stanley Kubrick for a long time.

(unearthly, eerie music)

Our Art Director, Jack Shampan, again, family.

A man that you couldn't stop working - whatever time

you got to the studio, if you got there at six o' clock,

you thought you were early, he'd been there

half an hour before, hunting around, trying to find

little pieces to fit into this set or the other set, to make them

full of the character that he did so well.

- [Narrator] In 1983 I was lucky enough to interview

Jack Shampan at Pinewood Studios.

Along with Patrick's most valued collaborator,

David Tomblin.

Two men central to the conception and realisation

of The Prisoner.

Men Patrick had referred to affectionately

as "the lads".

- You and Pat had already got a sort of a visual

feeling about the place - not in detail -

of what the sets should be, to suit the...

- It was influenced very heavily by Portmeirion itself.

- Yes, but Portmeirion, as you know, is Mediterranean

architecture. - Mmhmm.

Whereas when we came indoors,

it was all way out, futuristic, almost going back to the days

of Fritz Lang, you know, and M, you know;

Everything was very stylised, and symbolic.

- Where can I make a call?

- Well there's a phone box around the corner.

- Thank you.

(ominous music)

(electronic buzzing)

(high pitched buzz)

- [Female operator] Number, please.

- What exchange is this?

- [Operator] Number, please.

- I want to make a call-- - You could call locally,

what is your number, sir?

- Haven't got a number.

- [Operator] No number, no call.

(low buzz of dead line)

- I had never written before, and Patrick

came in one day and said, "I've seen Lew, we've

"got the money, we got the series."

I said, "Oh, great... what series is that?"

He said, "Well, you know what we talked about

all those years", and so on and so forth. So,

he said "Write the first story."

So I said, "I've never written before."

He said, "Well, you'd better start writing."

So I got hold of George Markstein,

I dragged him in the room, and we sat in there

for some long time and we came up with.. Arrival.

I gave it to Patrick, who read it, got very excited by it,

and then he began to add touches.

He began to stylise it, and

it took on a really quite different look.

And he was going sort of over there,

and I was trying to keep it over here.

And between the two forces,

it ended up as it ended up, really.

And then my uncle here, put his fingers in the pie,

and that's how it all... - Made the thing look visual.

- Being the man he is and being the person I try to be,

we put everything into it.

All our time, in fact, we worked seven days a week,

16 hours a day, and tried to make every episode

really 1000 per cent.

I think it took me personally six months

to recover, before I felt human...

and probably took Patrick longer.

But Jack never had that problem, ‘cause he's

- a very resilient young man. - Yeah. (both chuckling)

- He was conscious of not to make himself feel...

it was a one-man show.

He did not want that.

He loved it, he loved the process.

He loved these people.

It was the best feeling in the world and I know

he couldn't wait to get in and go to work.

He loved being on the set.

He loved the team around him.

He loved when it was good, when it was really good,

and you feel like all your juices are going.

He loved that.

I think it was hard when it stopped, actually.

Yeah.

(wind howling)

- [Narrator] A main architect of the series

was Script Editor, George Markstein, who not only

had a serious falling out with McGoohan over

its drift away from espionage and into psychology,

but would later claim that the idea for The Prisoner was his.

But today, McGoohan was in generous mode.

Almost.

- George brought writers with a particular bent of mind.

They weren't Danger Man writers, none of them were.

They needed this sort of stylistic, futuristic thing,

and he knew a number of them and brought them in,

and I'm grateful to him for that.

First, they didn't jump straight into the Prisoner mould

and say, "Well, George has talked to us, we're going

"to write a script, a Danger Man script, fine."

But a Prisoner script, a little different,

so George had a technique which worked extremely well.

He'd take them out to the best restaurants in London,

wine and dine them, and I don't know what he did,

maybe he force-fed them into a Prisoner concept

but whatever it was, it worked.

- What I think was maybe difficult,

was that these directors and writers coming in

from a couple of other shows on television

at the time, and they think, "Oh, we're gonna do a spy,

"this is a spy show,

"we heard what the premise is, it's a secret agent

"who wants to retire.

"And each episode is going to revolve around that."

So that was the premise, the simple, simple premise.

But then what happened after that,

it was like a tree, the branches,

it then stimulated all sorts

of possibilities.

And then what happened... the series became something else.

- [Narrator] Maybe we could even talk about that

"something else", now that this was a very different Patrick.

He seemed to have relaxed.

Having received a brutal crash course from him

on how to interview, this was also a very different me.

- Of course, I always...

always loved fairy tales, I imagine most of us do,

we like fantasy, our myths,

our legends, and our belief that the impossible is possible,

that anything can happen within the mind.

(Rover shrieks)

It had something of a fairy tale about it.

More than that, to be absolutely specific,

it was an allegory.

An allegory, I think, is defined as a story in which

things, people, places, happenings

conceal a reason... (muted siren wail)

...or a symbolism.

(ominous western music)

One might say was it too outrageous

to have a western story, and a cowboy movie

in the middle of it, but I don't think so at all.

Because after all, we introduced into it

cardboard cutouts of various characters

and they came back from their little meander into

the six guns and the spurs of the cowboy story

back to their numbers in the Village.

- Interesting that he could separate fact

from fantasy so quickly.

- So fantasy, certainly. Fairy tales, yes. Allegory, always.

- Why do you care?

- And I think it was particularly crystallised

in what is my favourite episode, which is

Once Upon a Time.

A very fairy-tale time.

And because...

a little of that was autobiographical.

So I suppose I got that out of my system.

Whatever you call that, there's a name for it I suppose,

but I got it out.

- You will take six.

- Six?

- Of the best.

- I'm not guilty, sir.

-10.

- [Number Six] 12. - What?

-12, sir.

So that I can remember.

(ominous organ music)

- [Narrator] Once Upon a Time was also my favourite episode.

An Oedipal battle between McGoohan's Number Six

and Leo McKern's Number Two.

A physical and mental struggle for supremacy

all the way from the cradle to the grave.

- The set was called the Embryo Room

for obvious reasons,

and it was this head-on clash between two people.

It was do or die.

And Leo's rhythm's are so terrific,

you can throw out something... a quite unexpected inflection,

and he will immediately pick it up,

and come back with a new one of his own.

- Jacky.

- Shall have.

- A new master... - And you build upon that.

- Master. - Jacky.

- Master.

- Jacky. - It becomes a sort of

rhythmical duet.

- Master. - Jacky.

- Master. - Mother.

- Master. - Father.

- You knew that it was going to be hammer and tongs,

I mean, we were dear friends,

but we couldn't be dear friends in the midst of the show.

(screaming)

- (screaming) - All right, boy.

- All right, boy? - Yes.

(groaning)

- [Narrator] Patrick had demanded that I should

look him straight in the eye.

So now I did.

I asked him about poor Leo McKern.

- Leo, on Once Upon a Time, this is what you're

- trying to get out of me, isn't it? - (quiet laughter)

Leo, on Once Upon a Time, the pressure was... he'd just

come from a very demanding role in the theatre,

and he was very tired when he came on,

he had this sort of... the pressure was so much on him,

that he really couldn't work for a couple of days.

- [Narrator] In some circles, you might call that

a nervous collapse, or a breakdown; something McGoohan

had been less evasive about in his 1977 Canadian interview.

- Leo, one lunchtime,

went up to his dressing room, and I went to see the rushes,

and I knew he was tired.

I went up to the dressing room to tell him how

good I thought he'd been in the rushes,

and he was curled in the foetus position

on his couch there.

And he says, "Go away, go away."

He says, "I don't want to see you again.”

I said what are you talking about?

He says, "I've just ordered two doctors," he said.

"And they're coming over soon as possible."

He says, "Go away."

He'd gone. He'd cracked.

Which is very interesting.

There was terrific pressure, you see?

I know you.

- You're smart.

- In my mind.

- Yeah.

- In my mind, you're smart!

- Why did you resign?

- Yeah, you see?

- Why did you resign?

- You know who you are?

- Who am I?

- A fool?

- What? - Yes.

- No, don't. - Yes. An idiot.

No-- I'll kill you.

- I'll die.

- You're dead.

- [Narrator] This may be the only surviving

material evidence of what had happened offscreen.

A photo of McKern, signed by Patrick, with love,

and some of those all too familiar numbers.

Patrick's script for Once Upon a Time

was full of them.

How did he go about writing for the series?

- The writing of the script?

Well, any of the scripts that I wrote for that,

I write very fast, it churns around up here

for a long time, then I just have to...

When I attack it,

I have to go through, beat myself through to...

and then all of the three scripts that I wrote

for The Prisoner, each one was done in about

36 hours.

Once Upon a Time,

I think I wrote straight down.

I don't think I changed a word of that.

One, two, three, four, five.

Our property man, when he'd looked at it, he said,

"What idiot wrote this?",

you see, because there were four pages with nothing on it.

There was Leo, and there was me.

We used to write the character of me P, as for Prisoner.

It was "Leo, P, Leo, P..."

And for all these pages, all they were saying was...

- Six, five, six, five, six, five

- Six and one, six-- - Five.

- Six and one, six-- - Five.

- Six, six, six of one, and one of six,

six over one, into six.

- [Number Two] Six of one, half dozen the other!

- Pop goes the weasel.

"Six, six, six, six, six, a one and a one,

"and a dozen, and six, six..."

I don't blame the property master for saying - Mickey O'Toole,

who is a wicked Irishman with a great sense of humour -

he said "This rubbish here, whoever..?" Because I didn't have my own name on it,

the name I had on it when I sent it down onto the set,

because I knew I would be ridiculed,

was "Once Upon a Time by Archibald Schwartz."

So Mickey says, "This Archibald Schwartz..." (laughing)

-"...where did you find this guy?" - (laughter)

I said, "Trust me, he's a good lad, Mickey",

I said, "Trust me, he'll turn out to be all right."

Two, four, five!

- Six. - Five!

- Six! - Five!

Two, four, six.

(hushed) Five. That's me.

- Only Pat could've written those particular scripts.

And I think they're very good.

Sad to say. (laughter)

Yeah, he is a quite good writer, is Pat.

I wish I could act like he could write.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Television writer Lewis Greifer

knew McGoohan well, and contributed a script

to the series.

When I interviewed him in 1983,

it seemed he knew about McGoohan's increasing

obsession with those numbers.

- Well, first of all, towards the end it was

totally dominated by Pat.

Directing, writing, producing, his whole concept,

I mean, that is a rare phenomenon, because

most television series are teamwork.

By now, Pat was the team.

He was taking the thing very seriously, frankly.

Too seriously, as far as I was concerned.

And this Number One and Number Two business was really

bugging him.

(eerie, unearthly music)

I had a personal relationship with Pat,

and he used to come around here occasionally and say,

"You are Number Two."

(chuckling)

And my wife, I think was also number something or other.

Number Six.

Why is Number Six a likeable character?

Because he is fighting.

He's not accepting the situation meekly,

he's not a docile person, he's a man that says

something is going on!

And I'd like to know what it is!

Pat is very much his own person, that's his characteristic.

Pat doesn't want to be lovable.

Pat's got no intention of having people love him.

- [Narrator] But the Patrick now sitting with us

on that hill above LA was lovable, generous,

and surprisingly honest.

Time to ask him about Number One.

- Yes, I know exactly what you mean by that,

who was going to be Number One?

All right, well, I'll level with you on that.

Nobody knew that.

Nobody knew that.

First person to discover that was after I'd dragged

myself out of the office and it was complete

after its 36-hours, childbirth thing, you know,

a lot of labour...

We had so much that we had the scripts run off

very quickly, again, another thing, so I got a copy

of this thing, and before I caught up a couple of hours'

sleep before working on Monday morning,

I sat with David, and we're having some tea or something

someplace, some tea room or something.

I said, you'd better read this.

And gave it to him.

And I just sat at another table and sipped tea.

Until he'd finished, then he gave it back to me.

And he said I thought it might be you in the end.

(snorts with laughter)

‘Cause there's nowhere else to go!

Who could it be?

You know?

I wasn't going ring up Sean, or Roger, or any

of these fellas, I mean, you know, who could it be?

I don't know who it could be.

(digital chirping)

- [Narrator] Back in February 1968, this is the moment

I'd waited 17 weeks for...

along with 17 million other people.

(digital chirping)

- 1 will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed,

briefed, debriefed, or numbered.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed,

briefed, debriefed, or numbered.

My life is my own.

I, 1,1, 1,1, I... (thunderous crashing)

(rising in pitch and speed) LLLLLLL

LLLLLLLL (breaking into maniacal laughter)

- Personally, I saw that coming quite a long way away.

I could see that he was really moving in that direction,

he really was getting very paranoid towards the end.

- [Man] We thought you would feel happier as yourself.

- The inevitability of his thinking was

the schizophrenic answer, you know,

Number One and Number Six are going to be the same.

That was the pressure the series was going towards.

Again, there was nobody wrote down things on the

piece of paper, I think it was Pat.

Actually moving in that direction, correctly.

Correctly.

And by that time, toward the end of the series,

it was Pat's series, totally,

I mean he had his own concept.

And yes, I wasn't surprised, because, as a matter

of fact, quite a long way from that, I thought

to myself, when are we going to get...

"Number One is me?"

(phone ringing)

Oh.

Hello?

- What is the most evil thing on Earth?

Is it...

Is it jealously, is it hate, is it revenge,

is it the bomb?

What is it?

When one really searches, it's only one thing,

it's the evil part of oneself.

The most evil thing that I could put in there,

behind those masks, first of all the black and white mask,

then the mask of the ape,

and behind that the grinning, evil face,

I hope, of myself, just for a split second,

and then you see it once more, just for a split second,

and I can't blame audiences saying I wonder what's

happening, what's going on?

If that was a cheat, then the whole thing's a cheat.

Because he could've got out.

I'd be very, very angry and disappointed

if they hadn't watched, if they hadn't jammed

the switchboards at ATV, I would've been outraged.

I would've slunk around for years with my tail between my legs,

instead of which, it was just terrific; loved it.

And if I can do that again, I'll do it again.

God love 'em, watch it.

Millions of them, and be outraged.

As long as people feel something.

That's the great thing. It's when they're walking around

not thinking, and not feeling, that's tough,

that's where all the dangerous stuff is, ‘cause when

you get a mob like that, you can turn them into

the sort of gang that Hitler had.

We don't want that.

We want people to say, "Hey, now wait a minute,

"you don't do that to me!

"I'm gonna call Lord Grade about that."

- Well, it wasn't very popular,

and the... you know, the switchboard at the network

just went crazy, crazy, crazy.

But in our household,

I just think that my father, he felt...

a little self-conscious, and probably that he shouldn't go

walking down the street for a couple of days.

People were expecting an answer,

and they were expecting a conclusion.

And they were expecting to see a face, for Number One.

Well, that was never gonna happen.

Never, never gonna happen.

And I have to say that I thought he was brave,

and courageous, because he went for it.

And he went for an ending that has longevity.

- I wanted to have controversy, argument.

Fights, discussions.

People in anger, waving fists in my face,

saying "How dare you?"

"Why don't you do more secret agents that we can understand?"

I was delighted with that reaction, I think

it's a very good one.

I think I was fortunate ever to

get out of England alive. (discordant music)

I imagine a lot of people watched the last

episode and expected a sort of conventional

end, and the evil person personified as the Number One,

that we'd never seen, this mystery character

that brooded over everything.

What was he gonna be like, what was he, a Jekyll,

no, not a Jekyll-Hyde, no, I think they expected

more a sort of James Bond villain at the end.

And I think they felt that they'd been robbed

with what they got.

A lot did.

Though I would argue against that.

I don't think they were robbed, because going back

to the allegory,

which is what it was,

so you have to have an allegorical ending.

I mean, you can't have Sean Connery

looking at himself at the end, saying "I'm gonna kill you, mate."

(slips into Cockney accent) You know, you can't do that.

It don't work for James Bond.

There's not a lotta mystery in James Bond.

- I always wanted to know what was going to happen

with the balloon.

But... (chuckling) nobody could tell me.

(whining noise; echoing jolt)

- [Narrator] Rover the balloon died in Fall Out.

The series had come a long way since the filming

of Arrival in Portmeirion, 18 months before.

We had come a long way too, today without any lights.

Just enough time to ask Patrick about The Prisoner's

continuing popularity, even though by now,

he had become little more than a silhouette

against the darkening LA skyline.

- Incredibly long life, well, you see there was

a thing that I'd always felt,

that it was sort of designed for 1984.

And it's ironic in some ways that it's running

in England again.

The tail end of '83, and I believe into '84. You know,

sort of Two Thousand-and-something, I don't know, maybe

there'll be one or two people who might want to see it then.

(The Prisoner theme music)

But the thing one must never do, which is, in some way -

I'll say this -

in some ways, maybe I shouldn't be doing this,

talking to you, and to the people who are going to view it,

and hear it; to explain The Prisoner.

because in myself, I am still getting new interpretations,

and I feel fortunate that in parts of it,

I hit lucky.

Be seeing you.

Those ideas, I hope, one can play with them forever.

The sky's the limit... isn't it?

I think the sky is the limit.

Be seeing you.

I hope.

(music: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star) [Narrator] End of the day,

end of our final interview, and the end of my trip.

Patrick seemed pleased with this last performance,

or maybe he was just relieved that it was all over.

For now.

As a fan turned rookie interviewer,

I was happy not to be returning to London empty-handed.

But mostly, I was happy because I'd actually met

Number Six....

Once Upon a Time.

We later flew to Paris to show Patrick

a cut of the documentary.

He hated it so much that he yelled at us

the entire day, in various cafes across the city.

When he went back to LA, he made his own documentary,

sent it to us in London, and asked for that to be

shown instead.

The original of that film has been lost,

maybe forever.

What you're about to see are pieces of a poor pirated

copy filmed off a television screen in Portmeirion.

# How many insects find their home

# In an English country garden? #

- Patrick's riposte to our film was typically mischievous.

He went to all the places we had been.

Santa Monica Beach, The Huntley Hotel.

He'd added music - Nana Mouskouri singing English folk songs -

and had his daughter Anne ask him the questions.

- "Be seeing you" has all sorts of connotations.

I mean, it can be a sort of "be seeing a friend", a girlfriend, a boyfriend,

"Be seeing you" with expectation of pleasant times ahead.

And it can be "seeing you", long journey, somebody going away.

And it can be a threat, "be seeing you".

And all sorts of things.

But mainly the thing about it here,

in the context of The Prisoner, was that

it was, "Be seeing you," meaning that there was this

constant surveillance,

that when you were asleep, when you were having your dreams,

someone was picking your dreams in your sleep.

(soft music)

# Early one morning just as the sun was rising

# I heard a young maid sing in the valley below

# Oh, don't deceive me, oh, never leave me

# How could you use a poor maiden so? #

- Did I have any fights in The Prisoner?

Oh, yes.

We had a couple of humdingers, and I think

it's always a good idea to have,

if you're gonna have a scrap, have a big one.

And get it out of the way.

So that everyone knows we're all on the same boat.

Because if the fight goes the wrong way...

verbal of course, all verbal...

then it's time for that person to say, "I'm leaving by another boat."

But if they're coming on your boat,

there are certain things that've got to be observed.

# Oh, don't deceive me

# Oh, never leave me

# How could you use a poor maiden so? #

- [Narrator] Needless to say, Patrick's film didn't go out

on Channel 4 on January 16th, 1984.

Ours did.

(Channel 4 theme)

- [Announcer] Now on Four, and only on Four,

the answers to the questions you may have been

asking since the beginning of The Prisoner.

(upbeat '80s synth music)

- [Narrator] Complete with obligatory '80s synth music,

and those primitive-looking video effects

of the time, Six Into One, The Prisoner File

was almost as hard to watch then as it is now.

So let's not.

- [Voiceover] Wipe it. Start again.

- [Narrator] 2017, and a rare opportunity

to try and put things right.

The chance to revisit familiar places,

old interviews, and distant memories.

The chance to make a new film,

the film that Patrick McGoohan deserves.

(ominous percussion)

(helicopter whine)

Unfortunately, there is no escape.

Certainly not from the past.

We've just seen that.

But there's also no escaping your destiny.

Not here.

Not in the Village.

(ominous music and engine wailing)

And so it begins all over again.

There's no escaping the questions that you ask of yourself.

- [Interviewer] Did the Prisoner escape?

- [McGoohan] No, the Prisoner never escapes.

I mean, you are a prisoner of something.

Everyone is a prisoner of something.

You escape when you're released, I suppose, by death.

That's the final release, and as to how and where you go,

and what they're after depends on what sort

of prisoner you were.

You could be a prisoner and free, at least on parole.

- [Interviewer] It's still rattling around in the mind, isn't it?

- [McGoohan] What, the concept?

Of course, yes. (sound of bars slamming shut)

(The Prisoner theme music)