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On the packaging, A&E Entertainment calls The Prisoner "Television's First Masterpiece." That may be something of an exaggeration, and it's doubtful fans of classic television won't have something to say about A&E's perspective on history. Surely, there must have been at least one masterpiece produced for television prior to 1967? Nonetheless, Patrick McGoohan's seminal BBC drama is indeed a masterpiece, albeit not the first.

The show is part espionage mystery, part prison drama, part psychological thriller, part social satire, and part science fiction. McGoohan produced the show, starred as the lead character, and wrote or directed several of the episodes. He plays a British government agent who resigns from his position for reasons that he will not disclose. Before he can leave London he is drugged and kidnapped, awaking in a disquietingly quaint little town known only as The Village. Of course, all is not well there. There are no names used in the Village. Our agent has his identity stripped from him and replaced with the generic moniker Number 6. Hidden cameras track his every move and all of the townspeople have some degree of involvement in the conspiracy that brought him here. Someone, it seems, is very eager to learn why Number 6 resigned from his top-secret post. It goes without saying that he can't leave the Village. There are no roads out of town, and every time he tries to escape an evil white beach ball hunts him down and subdues him. Yes, you heard me right, an evil white beach ball.

Most of the episodes follow the same basic formula. Number 6 devises a plan to outwit his captors, but is prevented from escape through betrayal and deception. The Village leaders, who are quickly replaced with each failure, are desperate to break Number 6 using any means at their disposal, including spies, drugs, hypnosis, and brainwashing. The Prisoner was produced for BBC television in the mid-1960s and is very much a product of its time. The show indulges in the type of psychedelic imagery that dates it instantly. The sets and costumes are all in bright, garish colors and half the production design is based around the look of a lava lamp. The filmmaking techniques are filled with shaky zoom shots and mismatched jump cuts. What keeps the show compelling and watchable is that it uses these devices to further the surreal tone of every episode. The Village is trapped so far outside of the real world that not even the most far-fetched or bizarre occurrence (such as the aforementioned beach ball) seems out of place. The series is rich in symbolism and meaning, and will keep a viewer intrigued without falling adrift into unintentional campiness.

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