A mixed bag of observations this time, as I get to the end of ‘Arrival’. I discovered that there isn’t a great deal to chew on in the perfectly efficient, if slightly unclearly told, one-act story contained in Act 4.
Doubles
The electrician who comes to fix P’s radio is played by Oliver MacGreevy. The gardener he bumps into a couple of seconds later is also played by Oliver MacGreevey. In ‘Free For All’, the second script into production (and written by McGoohan) he encounters a photographer on the Tally Ho played by Dene Cooper, and seconds later he bumps into a newspaper vendor played by Dene Cooper, on this occasion turning from vendor to see the photographer running off up the street waving goodbye. On both occasions, McGoohan gives an effective startle and is swiftly distracted. (An aside here - we should not forget how disconcerting such startles would have been to the millions of viewers familiar with him as John Drake, who never - however surprising a plot twist may be to him in Danger Man - reacts with anything but bluff and taking things in his stride.)
We might call these a little clue to the identity of Number 1, or at least moments to remember when ‘The Schizoid Man’ turns up. If I’d been McGoohan in 1968, I’d have claimed the fleeting appearances of these doubles as a hint in plain sight - I’d have bluffed something like ‘the eagle-eyed viewer will remember that someone can be in two places at the same time in the Village’.
But why are they there, in the series and within its fiction?
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