RIP Patrick McGoohan
It's not the week's biggest news (or for that matter its biggest artist obituary) but actor Patrick McGoohan has died.
Except for his rather rigid, villainous turn in Braveheart, I only know his work as the creator and star of the 1960s TV series "The Prisoner". I like that show a lot for its sublime/ridiculous mix of satire, deconstructed secret agent stories, non-deconstructed secret agent stories, and obscure symbolism -- It's hit or miss but I like that McGoohan's vision for his project, sharp edges and rough spots alike, doesn't seem to have been smoothed over by a roomful of writers. In fact it's all the more endearing to me that the show's goings-on can equally end up brilliant or corny, or as some heady mix of the two. Just today in an email to my brothers, before I read McGoohan's obit, I was comparing "The Prisoner" favorably to the much glossier allegory-by-committee of ABC's "Lost". I don't believe they make TV programs like they used to...
Except for his rather rigid, villainous turn in Braveheart, I only know his work as the creator and star of the 1960s TV series "The Prisoner". I like that show a lot for its sublime/ridiculous mix of satire, deconstructed secret agent stories, non-deconstructed secret agent stories, and obscure symbolism -- It's hit or miss but I like that McGoohan's vision for his project, sharp edges and rough spots alike, doesn't seem to have been smoothed over by a roomful of writers. In fact it's all the more endearing to me that the show's goings-on can equally end up brilliant or corny, or as some heady mix of the two. Just today in an email to my brothers, before I read McGoohan's obit, I was comparing "The Prisoner" favorably to the much glossier allegory-by-committee of ABC's "Lost". I don't believe they make TV programs like they used to...
2 Comments:
Yeah, The Prisoner was/is a great show. I enjoyed, at some point, talking about it in front of our parents to find out that Mom watched it when she was little.
McGoohan's turn in Cronenberg's movie Scanners is definitely worth watching--he comes off as rather Orson Welles-ish (in a good way)--though, you should be able to stomach Cronenberg's body-horror special effects (most notably, an exploding head) to watch it.
I've been meaning to watch Ice Station Zebra as well, since apparently he's in that, and I liked the book when I was a kid.
I once read a little bio-blurb about Patrick McGoohan that described Ice Station Zebra as "Howard Hughes' favorite movie", which is an amusingly charitable way of putting it.
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