Apart from the three that make up its opening and the finale, the episodes of The Prisoner can, technically, be shown any old how. Just about.
However. Any attentive viewer coming new to it and watching the episodes as originally screened in the UK in 1967/68 will likely be disquieted by oddities as he or she goes along - for example, how P is supremely cocky and seen-it-all-before in episode three but is a dazzled, disorientated, easily wrong-footed newbie in episode eight. Or how the three most ‘out there’ episodes, not set in the Village, are all lumped together near the end, weakening the central sense of P’s imprisonment before the finale.
There were good reasons why the episodes of many TV series were made to be interchangeable back in the day. The practical difficulty of transporting a limited number of film prints around the United States during syndicated repeat runs was the main factor; far easier to have a mostly swappable run of reels that could be Wells Fargo-ed about willy-nilly from state to state. The practice also allowed broadcasters the freedom to be picky, moving the better episodes up front in their schedules to attract and retain audiences.
They could often be quite cavalier about this - The Prisoner’s direct studio neighbour Man In A Suitcase kicked off with ‘Man From The Dead’, made first, which sets up the main character’s history and the premise of the show. ITV screened it sixth. Another close ITC contemporary The Champions has an episode - ‘The Interrogation’ - which seems to be its finale, forever altering its characters and their relationships and making a reset impossible, but which was made halfway through the shoot and shown as episode 18 of 30.
Our modern understanding as viewers of 21st century TV - with its arcs, journeys and character development - is hard to reconcile with this practice. Almost every modern TV drama tells a continuous, continuing overarching story, of the kind that was once confined - on American TV - to sagas and soap operas. ‘What happens this week’ has been replaced by ‘what happens next’.
So we balk at the idea of the cut-and-shut production line TV of old, and sneer about the ‘reset button’ that returns the characters and situation to their norm so that any old episode can be shown next. Nobody ever learns, or grows, or changes.
And there is a lot in that. But -
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Culture Bunker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.