My first email address was kar120c@cats.ucsc.edu
I loved that damn car.
Eighty years old.
I’m kind of stuck there, because the number of memories coming back to me from The Prisoner, and being the only 12 year old in the 80s who watched that, and you know I don’t know what I want to say. How can I say anything to even remotely do the man justice? He was amazing, impossible, inventive, probably zonked out of his gourd on acid, and fun. Wild and crazy, he helped redefine British TV and proved you could make something out of nothing, layer it with questions and innuendos and answer nothing, and still be good TV.
And now he’s dead.
McGoohan influenced so many people, from Star Trek to Babylon Five and back around to things like Columbo (for which he won two Emmys). He was creative in a way I’ve not seen until Steve Jobs (who thinks so far out of the box, sometimes you have to remind him there is a box).
As an aside, they’re making a new ‘Prisoner’ and you can watch all the old ones on AMC’s website: The entire 1960s series. I’m not sure what I feel about a ‘new’ Prisoner, and I’ll have to wait for it to air in the US.
Oh and to answer the question, “Who is number one?” That would be telling.