January 14, 2009
HE WAS JUST AFRAID OF WHAT A MESS THEY MIGHT MAKE OF THE REMAKE:
Prisoner star Patrick McGoohan dies (Daily Telegraph, 14 Jan 2009)
McGoohan played the title character Six in the surreal 1960s show filmed in Portmeirion in Wales.He also won two Emmy Awards for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama Columbo.
In more recent years he appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart.
American-born McGoohan was a stage actor before landing TV and film roles.
The Danger Man star scripted and directed several episodes of The Prisoner in addition to serving as executive producer and starring as the lead.
The surreal show tells the story of a man who finds himself trapped in a mysterious and surreal place known as The Village, with no memory of how he arrived.
As he frantically explores his environment, he discovers that its inhabitants are identified by number instead of by name and have no memory of a prior existence or outside civilisation.
Not knowing who to trust, Number Six is driven by the desperate need to discover the truth behind The Village, which is controlled by the sinister and charismatic Number Two.
Last year, ITV confirmed that Sir Ian McKellen and Jim Caviezel will star in the network's remake of The Prisoner.
While The Prisoner was obviously derivative itself--as if George Orwell wrote for TV--you can see its influence in The Truman Show, Lost, Life on Mars and myriad other shows and films. What made McGoohan so effective as first a [the] secret agent and then as Number 6 was a certain inaccessibility, such that you could believe he'd act with brutality and/or that he was crazy.
MORE:
-OBIT: Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner actor dies aged 80 (Leigh Holmwood, 1/14/09, guardian.co.uk)
McGoohan, who was born in New York but raised in England and Ireland, came to screen prominence in ITV's early 1960s drama series Danger Man, in which he played a secret agent.He was also considered for the lead role in the first James Bond movie, Dr No, before Sean Connery was cast.
However, it was The Prisoner, which aired originally on ITV between 1967 and 1968, with which he was chiefly associated, writing some of the episodes himself under a different name.
His character, Number Six, spent the entire time attempting to escape from a prison – which was disguised as a holiday camp – and trying to find out the identity of his captor, the elusive Number One. He repeatedly declared: "I am not a number - I am a free man!"
-OBIT: 'Prisoner' actor McGoohan dies in US (Vicky Shaw, 1/14/09, Press Association)
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