Moving on from the Prisoner to Danger Man

I have played even less video games since the last post from three weeks ago than in the weeks before it. I have not even touched a video game in ages. Well, I did straighten out the games on my shelves one evening so I did technically touch a video game box.

Anyway, last week I was out of town for a few days. You don't know which town I live in, where I went and what I did while I was away so no point in saying anything more about that.

I finally finished watching all the Prisoner episodes. Great series. It took me longer to watch through the series than it normally would have because I managed to accidentally force my mother to watch it with me and she has less free time than me so I had to wait longer before seeing the next episode, and I of course had to show her the first 7 episodes that I had already watched alone. Rewatching the episodes I had already seen recently was actually a very good thing, because I actually noticed a lot of new things I missed before and some of the episodes, like Free For All for instance really did open up more for me on the second viewing.
The worst episode of the series in my opinion was Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My  Darling, where number 6's mind is planted in another man's body. This episode was written because Patrick McGoohan was filming Ice Station Zebra ( I've been looking for the book for years now, by the way) but they had to continue filming new episodes for the series anyway, and you can tell McGoohan wasn't around to say no to certain stuff. I'm not saying the Prisoner is a perfect series and that all the episodes McGoohan did get to influence were masterpieces, but this particular episode is just a failure in every way it can be. First of all, the actor playing number 6 after his mind is transferred just doesn't have the acting skills needed to make it work. Not saying he was necessarily a bad actor altogether, but he's not number 6 nor does he have the needed presence and charisma. When the entire series is all about two things, McGoohan and the Village and the episode takes place outside the Village already, you better pull off the best most applause-worthy performance anyone has ever seen, whether you're just impersonating McGoohan or doing your own thing with the role.
The episode having neither of it's two sole attractions is already a handicap enough, but then they introduce number 6's love interest from life before the Village, the one we have never heard of before even though he's supposed to be so in love with her that he was going to marry her (despite the fact that he was going to leave the country alone before getting kidnapped), and all things considered a romantic interest just doesn't fit in with the series at all. Then there's the weird end where right after the professor-in-another-man's-body has taken one step outside, no. 2 is somehow unable to just call the helicopter pilot back once he figures out he's been fooled. The ending and the entire episode is so stupid on so many levels it's hard to explain why it's so stupid in one entire blogpost even, but you'll understand it if you ever see the episode yourself. So, worst episode in the series, it never even had a chance.
The best episode is harder to pick, but one noteworthy episode is Free For All. I find it interesting that on the first viewing I thought it was clearly the worst of the first seven episodes, but on the second viewing liked it a lot.

Now I'm in the middle of watching McGoohan's other great series called Danger Man on flash video files. A great example of what I wrote about in the previous post, this series has never been released on DVD in Finland. The best way for me to buy it would be to order a US DVD set of the series under the title of Secret Agent from an Australian online store (or possibly some country closer than that but I failed to find any other suitable stores) and have them ship it here. They do make purchasing the DVDs of old tv shows rather difficult for us, don't you think?

Oh, coincidentally(?) they have begun showing the 2009 Prisoner miniseries on tv here, first episode was shown last Monday. Looked as boring as I thought it would after having read everything there is to know about the series.