Today, March 19, is the birthday of Patrick McGoohan.
It’s a timely opportunity to remember and pay tribute to McGoohan, an iconoclastic talent who excelled as an actor, director, producer, screenwriter and creator of one of the most unusual, provocative, genre-smashing and influential TV series in history.
I’m referring, of course, to The Prisoner, inducted in 2002 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
McGoohan (1928-2009) achieved a great deal on screen in his long and well-respected career. But The Prisoner in retrospect may be his crowning and most lasting achievement.
Yet, when McGoohan conceived, wrote and starred in the short-lived series, no one quite knew how to categorize it or what to make of it.