I like to imagine you completely misunderstood the balloon, and that it was trying to eat you, but constantly failed due to it's lack of a mouth

Yeah most of the reorganized Prisoner episode lists have The General right before A,B,C. The basic theory is that the screwup of the General was damaging to #2 which is why he was so paranoid and driven on A,B,C. It also adds an extra layer of "you're screwed" when you hear the red phone warble at the end :)

I wonder why 6 never tried to pop rover with a broken bottle

It's a shame Dom thought so little of his ability to review this show, as I quite liked what he did. I hope one day he picks this up again.

So very happy that you're continuing this series Dom! It's an absolute joy to watch these, especially since literally NOBODY ELSE I know seems to know The Prisoner, let alone be able to talk about it in such detail.

No idea what the hell is going on in this, but loving it anyways.

I have put off looking up the ending to this show just because I want The Dom to reveal it.

Fantastic. I had feared you'd given up on the series that first drew me to your channel. I'll watch this after the football (because I'm that much of an English stereotype).

While I don't think any canon ep list is going to totally work (except for obvious beginning and endings, and the deductive order of Schizoid/General/ABC, not necessarily that close together), partly because half the episodes were written on the fly when ITC picked up the series, my theory includes two connected reasons for MHR, putting it almost halfway through the order. To wit: 1.) Arrival (duh 2.) Checkmate: the only other ep with the chubby shopkeeper for reasons which become evident during the ep. The Village is trying to threaten 6 without damaging him; and meanwhile set up a situation where he quickly damages relationships with the legitimate prisoners. Now they and he won't seek each others' help, even though he can deduce who is and isn't a jailer. This breach gets fixed in a much later ep. 3.) Dance of the Dead: the final attempt to scare 6 with object examples of how bad it can get here and screwy mind games. 4.) A Change of Mind: the first attempt to go dangerously hard on breaking 6, but it backfires badly. 5.) Free For All: this and ACoM are pretty similar, but FFA makes some sense as a revenge plot for 6 counter-striking them in ACoM. (The episode really exists for McGoohan to make sociological points about elections of course, so isn't necessarily ever going to make much sense within a canon order.) 6.) The Chimes of Big Ben: agreeing with the concept of spacing Leo McKern out as far as possible (pun not intended!) and so putting this as early as possible, 6 has been around long enough to get a little blase and suspicious about new girls being foisted on him. This is an epic major escape attempt, and works partly as a way of convincing 6 that he might as well not bother with (relatively) normal escape attempts. 7.) Many Happy Returns: the ultimate demonstration that it doesn't matter if 6 escapes, they'll just bring him back. After this, 6 stops trying all conventional escape attempts. Considering there is some evidence of multiple Villages, 6 is probably taken to a spare Village for this ep, and then later (since they can always drug him at night for protracted periods) shuttled back to the usual Village. This leaves him with a conveniently false impression of where the Village is. (TCoBB doesn't count because he's kept in the dark about how he's actually traveling anyway.) 8.) Do Not Forsake Me O My Darling: MHR might have also been setting up 6's mission for the Village here -- even if he escapes the total theft of his identity and makes a run for it, they'll catch him. So he might as well complete the mission and get his body back. There is some tangential evidence that this mission is related to why he resigned. (Producers have gone on record that they had a clear plot resolution planned out which wouldn't involve this ep being evidence, but by the time the show was fleshed out with extra eps the original plan didn't make sense anymore.) 9.) The Schizoid Man: is so awesome an ep, that I aesthetically like to put it as late as possible; but deductively it has to go here in relation to remaining eps. 6 is blase and arrogant about dealing with the Village, even letting down his guard to befriend the photographer despite clearly knowing the risk. 10.) The General: necessarily a sequel to Schizoid due to 6 causing 2 to be suspicious over treating the General like a human being. Also necessarily predates ABC. Eps could theoretically separate any of these three in this order, but there just aren't enough eps left to feasibly do so. He's starting to get proactive about screwing with the Village even when they aren't directly targeting him. 11.) A, B, and C: after 6 screws up the General (a plot that wasn't about him at all), the current 2 is rebuked for not having focused on breaking 6 yet, and is given an ultimatum. 12.) It's Your Funeral: plays on, and repairs, damage done back in Checkmate. 6 starts despondent and bitter, but slowly decides to take a dangerously proactive role in Village life. This could also go in front of the General. 13.) Living in Harmony: is McGoohan playing around with the series while running out the clock, so should be late. After this debacle, the order could easily come down not to risk messing with 6 directly for a while. If IYF is put after G and ABC, this could be flipped with it easily, but it also works as a reaction to how he's messing with the Village more actively now. The dead super-evil flunky comes back resurrected later and penitent (if crazily so). 14.) The Girl Who Was Death: again McG is playing around with the series, in spoof mode. Probably not even canonical. Could illustrate desperation by leaders, against a 6 who has basically beaten them. The 2 actor comes back in the finale as the judge; possibly another reason not to consider it canon. 15.) Hammer Into Anvil: 6 is pretty much in total control at this point; the Village is running out of any competent new 2s. This is arguably the biggest defeat of a 2, which could suggest to Village overseers that they have no choice but to go for an all or nothing last ditch attempt. 16 & 17, grand finale two parter.

3:33 "Holy Shit, is that the guy who played Hotspur in 'Chimes at Midnight'?" said my brain. I googled it, and my brain came to the discovery "No! It's the guy who played Geoffrey in 'The Lion in Winter'. Damn, those 60's British actors are hard to tell apart."

10:22 Maybe it's a cultural difference maybe it was just the decade, but it boggles my mind how Six keeps reacting to his freedom being snatched away from him with exhausted frustration and not righteous rage. At some point, I would think, he would just start beating the crap out of every "we win" smug smile he sees.

YAY more Prisoner! Ever since I finished watching the series I have been looking forward to your reviews and especially the final episode.

I love your channel and your work Dom, and hope to see it grow to be one of the best review channels on KZfaq. Good luck.

Brilliant witty dialog accompanying the main scenes. LOved it!

I know this video is five years old, but thank you! I bought the DVDs ages ago, and I also thought that Number 12 was totally checking out Number Six romantically.

Coincidentally Big Finish premiered their trailer for the audio adaptation of The Prisoner yesterday.

Number 6 should have asked was 'Why did I resign?' because clearly the machine could not answer that question otherwise the village wouldn't be screwing with him anymore if it could

I miss these retrospectives. I haven’t been able to find these episodes so the reviews were my only source.

this was great!

An interview with rover.... I'm cracking up

I. I think I have a new love. That roar. That....roundness. 😳

props on the Buffy clip

I really need to watch this show sometime.

The Lotus Super 7 series II Seen in Many Happy Returns was sold after the filming and later written off in a racing accident, presumably in Australia were it had been sold. Caterham Cars who legally own the KAR 0120 registration as well as the car used in the first series of the show (I'm thinking they mean the original 7 episodes) , built a Limited Edition Prisoner Series 7 in the early 1990s. The number 6 car was given to McGoohan and passed on to his son in law. The cars included a plaque on the dash with McGoohan's signiture embossed on it. Interestingly on a separate note, the shows have a number of different numbers of order assigned to them depending on the source. So episodes I watched in KTEH out of San Jose are in an even different order then ITC's airing order originally.

I may have just watched this recently, but I just like you're videos so much, I'll watch it again. Probably mainly for one joke, but hey?

you my good sir are awesome keep up the good work

Regarding "Many Happy Returns," I don't think it was pointless. I think that by letting him out of his cage in a way that he had to work hard for (25 days at sea) and was hence unlikely to suspect was as fake as "Chimes of Big Ben," he was more likely to lead them to whatever info it was that they wanted. "Let him go, and we'll follow him and see what happens" is a very old, very successful spy tactic. They were just doing it here on a grand scale. It also appears that his old bosses probably were not in on it, didn't know about The Village, etc, (Based on the alternate cut), so they gave him free rein, and once they realized it wasn't working they just brought him back to the Village. It all makes sense to me. "Chimes of Big Ben" was the closest they ever came to breaking him. He actually started to explain when he realized Big Ben was chiming the wrong time. This was a variation on that, a bigger scale version that hoped to build on their earlier near-success.

The village authorities did capture a new spy plane out of Many Happy Returns

The answer to why is because? ...Yeah. Sounds about right.

I always wondered why that guy helped 6. Why he was so opposed to The General. Anyway, what I liked about The General is that it shows not everything in the Village revolves around 6. They weren't even remotely interested in him until he involved himself in their experiments, and it clearly wasn't THIS #2's job to break him. In the following episode, #2 is clearly supposed to be breaking 6, and his life is clearly on the line, but I don't think that's the norm.

My opinion: Many Happy Returns serves as the end of the first series of 13 episodes (it should be episode 13; Joanna Southcott's ordering of the episodes), with No. 6 finally escaping, but it does him no good because his superiors are clearly in on it.

Hey Dom, can you do a Lost in Adaptation video on the book and movie Holes?

YEAH

Many Happy Returns is surely about 6's hubris in thinking he could both get away and come back without being caught, presumably after The General win? He feels morally superior, but the Village organization has other superiorities. Plus, when put to it, he can't actually leave his old life behind - he goes straight back to his old house, job, life. He doesn't really have the imagination to properly leave. There is that annoying feeling you get in Thomas Hardy novel though, that none of the character seem to have basic survival skills and keep actively choosing to commit symbolic suicide, like when Tess decides to 'hide out' after murdering her abuser at Stonehenge, a well-known tourist spot.

we can do it, trust me

Worth noting for episode order: the main reason #2 gets suspicious about "#12" being really #6 in the Schizoid Man episode, is that #6 doesn't know who "the General" is. He naturally treats the General as a person; #2 knows it's really a computer, not yet deployed in the Village. The dialogue makes clear that 6 has stumbled somehow but the episode itself never reveals how. (With the second test regarding Susan yes, but not with the General.) Consequently, Schizoid Man must deductively predate both the General and ABC.

That's not a golf cart it's a Mini Moke.

I don't know what's going on here, but I like it.

Viewings of you viewing the prisioner are just as rare as viewings of answers on viewings of the show.... I hope that just as monthy python once said, you'llGet on with it! 👌

We will get to that last episode...he promised. Right?

So, when you finally get through the original, would you be willing to take a look at the AMC remake?

You know you can buy actual rovers at Portmerion...

To be fair, the idea for "The General" was itself clearly inspired by Huxley.

bizzar and funny, especially that trampoline sport/fight? thingy :-S Are you going to do anymore, i have got to see how this show ends

When is the next one coming, and I've seen the last episode of this show and I'm still wondering what the heck this all about.

7:56 my husband drives my car, I never drive his car, Lol. 😂👍

*Valley Girl voice* "This statement is false?"

Because.

Who else think the episodes being released in mis match or turn around order was intentional so the viewer would feild as weird or being confused and driven mad as number six

yeeeeeeeeeessssss

2:04 - Who is that chasing him in the red pajamas with the blue cape?

It's was his birthday!

You're the only person on KZfaq that I watch that has videos at 50 FPS, why is that?

33 views with 61 likes, that's The Dom :P.

What is this? Where are the other 5 episodes? I don't know this show, let alone that you were reviewing it.

I am Not Amused!

I know nothing about this show. was it only for the UK?

when more six? :U

How many other people only know this show exists because of Iron Maiden?

Mainlining this much british telly at once seems to have affected your usual loquaciousness. I noticed a lot more english colloquialisms than usual in your videos

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