Patrick McGoohan is dead. I’m sad and you should be too.

McGoohan was best known as the writer, creator, executive producer and star of the TV series The Prisoner, the only existentialist spy show. McGoohan had done 54 episodes of Secret Agent (aka Danger Man), a James Bond rip-off and was tired of the same old clichés. So he proposed a follow up series in which an un-named secret agent is kidnapped and imprisoned in what appears to be a luxury resort. Here he is given the designation “Number Six” and alternately tortured, bribed, bullied, hypnotized, drugged and otherwise abused in an attempt to get the priceless information he has stored in his head. The series first aired in England from October, 1967 through February, 1968.

The Prisoner is much more than a spy show. It’s actually an extended metaphor for the way society tries to break down the individual and mold him or her to its own needs and wants. It’s about how most people capitulate but a few brave souls resist. It’s a brilliant thing to behold and if you’ve never seen it, you should go watch all 17 episodes right now.

Originally conceived of as a seven-part serial, the ITC network convinced McGoohan to make ten more episodes so that it could run in America. In the end, the CBS network refused to air an episode it considered to be a metaphor about those resisting being drafted to fight the Vietnam War. In that episode, Number Six is drugged and made to believe he is a cowboy in the old West. But he refuses to carry a gun. We can't have that on American TV!

I was introduced to the series by my first Zen teacher. We used to pop popcorn and watch it on the 7 inch black and white TV in his room every Saturday. The Prisoner was way more Zen than Kung Fu or any other supposedly “Zen” TV series ever managed to be, although McGoohan himself was said to be a rather devoted Christian. It asked probing questions about the nature of the self and reality. Not something you see much on network television.

McGoohan went on to play other roles, most notably in Braveheart where he was King Edward “Longshanks,” as well as several guest turns on the TV series Columbo. Personally I liked him best as the scenery chewing evil scientist in the living-dinosaur-in-Africa epic Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend.

McGoohan was 80 years old and had reportedly been ill for some time, but was said to be preparing for a role in a remake of The Prisoner. I’m so sad I have nothing else to say. But here’s part one of a incredible four-part interview with McGoohan from 1977.