The Prisoner

Easily one of the best television programs ever. I saw it at a young age when it first aired (as a summer replacement for the old Jackie Gleason show in the US), caught it as a young adult when PBS ran the series again in the Eighties, and have owned and enjoyed the DVD set numerous times since acquiring it a few years back. I can't praise this show highly enough: utterly unique, visionary, and has lost none of its power and relevance in the intervening years. McGoohan's labor of love is one of the closest things we have to truly meriting the term 'television classic'.

50 Is The New Cutoff Age.

I'm from the UK and it was broadcast in the late 60s and on channel 4 in the 80s. I watched both and have the dvds.
I may be wrong, but didn't America ban the episode 'Living in Harmony' the first time 'round?.. and wasn't it because it was felt that the theme, not of Western guns etc but hallucinary drugs wasn't appropriate for viewers to see?

The Prisoner, for me, I think, can be watched on many levels. It has many messages that can be applied to real life and society.

One of my personal thoughts is that I think the village DIDN'T want No'6 to tell them why he resigned!
It was, if you like, a test!

What's your thoughts..???

I may be wrong, but didn't America ban the episode 'Living in Harmony' the first time 'round?.. and wasn't it because it was felt that the theme, not of Western guns etc but hallucinary drugs wasn't appropriate for viewers to see?

No, “America” did not “ban” any episode. “Living In Harmony” was not broadcast during its initial run in the U.S. because the “Standards and Practices” office of the TV network advised against showing it citing drug related issues. This is a bit strange, though, because many of the other stories involved drugs of different sorts. A competing theory is that, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Number Six refused to arm himself and use violence to defend the town. One commentator writes:

Indeed, an ITC official has stated that this was the major concern of the U.S. broadcasters. It may be that the setting of this episode – a small American town in the western tradition – hit a little close to home. It is easy enough to overlook potentially subversive ideas when they are proclaimed in a fantasy world like The Village, but when they are enacted within a mythical western town, they take on a keener sense of reality.

The debate over “Living in Harmony” could be widened to include the question: Is “The Prisoner” a politically subversive series? Or is it just a strange and fascinating type of entertainment?

mf

“I know that, in spite of the poets, youth is not the happiest season"

I recently moved to a 55 and over retirement community. It was explained to me that they have a "Rover" that drives around the neighborhood and reminds people to do things like shut their garage doors at night.

All I could picture was a huge white ball bouncing and rolling. I tried to explain this to the lady that told me about it, but she's too young to know what I was talking about.

Be seeing you.