In the last couple of weeks Patrick McGoohan, Tony Hart and Ricardo Montelban off of Fantasy Island and a couple of the Planet of the Apes movies have all scuttled off this mortal coil. This comes mere weeks after the sad death of Oliver Postgate. Now the world of Television is in a much poorer state. That is not to say that any of these people have been particularly bothering our TV screens recently. The climate of TV is a much different place now to when these giants walked amongst us.
Tony Hart comes from an era of kids’ TV presenters that just don’t exist anymore. A lovely middle aged expert in his field. End of an era.
McGoohan was once the highest paid actor on TV, not just in the UK but in the entire world. His TV spy show Danger Man was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and featured not one but two of the greatest themes ever. One for the UK and one for the US. I played small tribute to both these tracks playing them both before my first spy themed Tombola of Fun show. The success of Danger Man and his matinee idol looks made him the obvious first choices to play both The Saint and James Bond, roles that he turned down. There was always something down right odd about McGoohan’s performances, and a suggestion that something was always going on behind his eyes. He’s knows something that we don’t. Good looks aside he was actually, probably just too interesting an actor play either Bond or Simon Templer. Before signing on the dotted line for Danger Man he insisted that his character would always use his brain before using a gun, all the fistfights should be different, and that he wouldn’t kiss anyone, which in the era of Bond was just downright weird. Danger Man’s legacy is probably not what it ought to be. Appearing two years before the Bond movies, I dare say it’s huge success had something to do with them making of Dr. No, and when I say huge success I mean that for a few short years it was the biggest show on both sides of the Atlantic and McGoohan, TV’s biggest star. To modern audiences Danger Man is just a cult favourite, well known for spawning the title Danger Mouse 20 years later, but most notable for being the quasi-prequel to McGoohan’s follow-up series The Prisoner. It’s certainly the reason I watched Danger Man.
The Prisoner of course also had a downright cool-as-shit title sequence and theme. Music courtesy of Ron Grainer most famous for the providing the theme tune for Steptoe and Son as well as the fantastic score for top Charlton Heston movie The Omega Man. I was first exposed to The Prisoner through it’s entire title sequence being used to advertise the London based talk radio station LBC back in the 80s. This ad used to fascinate me and you can imagine my excitement when I found out it belonged to full length TV series. Imagine watching the trailer for Star Wars and then finding out that you could watch a two hour version of this two minute compilation, it was like that. The Prisoner is a strange and wonderful TV show that everyone owes to themselves to see. Simply one the best ever. In this era of multi-series DVD box sets there’s no excuse not to treat yourself to 17 episodes of this fine, fine show. If you watch these box sets and by now you’ve watched all the good stuff so you’re now painfully wading through CSI: Miami Season 9 (or something), and you’ve never seen The Prisoner then you are a moron. It is a bafflingly brilliant show and testament to McGoohan who created and co-wrote and directed the series. It’s thrilling that an actor at the height of his powers chose to make such an expensive, odd show, that went out to a primarily bemused primetime audience on ITV in 1967. Afterwards McGoohan made a number of movies but never again made anything as significant as The Prisoner, but then again neither did anyone else.
He went on to acheive the accolade of playing “the muderer” in more episodes of Columbo than any other actor. He even wrote and directed episodes in the series, including one in which he played a bizarre retired spy who keeps using the phrase
“Mahjong, detective!” for no particular reason, other than to entertain me it seemed. The portrait of McGoohan was provided by the brilliant Lord Hurk. Be seeing you Patrick.
