A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode thirteen — A Change of Mind

Number Six's Public Enemy Number Six act is getting tired — and what is alternately referred to within a single scene as The Committee, The Council, and The Commission will tolerate it for only so long before they decree that their prize captive must undergo Instant Social Conversion. It's a procedure so chilling that Number Eighty-Six (the marvelous Angela Browne) must narrate it step-by-step, and very, very slowly, so as not to induce panic. John Sharpe is our unctuous, openly misogynistic Number Two. Happily, we get to see Six's homebuilt crossfit gym in the woods once again.

"A Change of Mind"

Written by Roger Parkes

Directed by Joseph Serf (Patty McG)

Original airdate December 15, 1967

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode fourteen — Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling

It seems Patty McG had softened his "don't call it television because television cuts corners and we'll never ever do that" position by the time of The Prisoner's much-abbreviated second and final season, because for most of the production of this week's episode he decided his time would be better spent in Los Angeles co-starring in John Sturges' unmemorable 1968 thriller Ice Station Zebra with Rock Hudson, Ernest "Resistance Is Futile" Borgnine, and Jim Brown.

"Chimes of Big Ben" screenwriter Vincent Tilsey got the unenviable job of coming up with a Prisoner story that would require neither the show's star nor its key location, Portmerion in North Wales. He came up with a brain-swapping scenario that would allow hardworking actor Nigel Stock to play Number Six. Upon his return from the States, McGoohan demanded extensive changes to the show that had been made in his absence. But he did not demand that Stock un-kiss Six's left-behind fiancee Janet (Zena Walker), who was never mentioned prior to this episode and shall never be again. Also, the head of MI6 was going to be SIx's father-in-law, apparently. Script editor George Markstein was long gone by this point and no one was minding the store.

The mailbag overfloweth this week, so we moved the listener mail segment to the back half of the episode. Thank you for your correspondence.

"Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling"

Written by Vincent Tilsley

Directed by Pat Jackson

Original airdate December 22, 1967

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode twelve — It's Your Funeral

There's an assassination plot afoot in The Village, and Number Six must protect his oppressor to spare his fellow Villagers. Derren Nesbitt is our Number Two and Annette Andre is our Girl Friday. Neither one of them could stand their scene partner an (uncredited) director, Patty McG. Pink-blazered henchman Mark Eden didn't hate him, but he did resent his attempt to strangle him on camera.

This creative tension results in one of The Prisoner's most rewarding episodes, replete with crossfit and and Kosho and lots more. Plus, listener mail!

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Those Who Wish Me Dead" and What's Making Us Happy

Finn Little and Angelina Jolie are on the run and in the woods. (Warner Bros.)

I’m back on PCHH this week with cofounding hosts Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson plus Walter Chaw, a Denver-based writer and critic whose work I’ve long admired, to chew over Those Who Wish Me Dead. The flick is an Angelina Jolie-headlined rural adventure thriller that will disappoint you only if you happen to know that its writer-director, Taylor Sheridan, wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water — two films that are leagues above this one in every regard. The panel is fairly unanimous in their mild enthusiasm for this so-so movie, but it’s a fun discussion all the same. But in the What’s Making Me Happy segment, I get to praise once again one of the most unique blockbusters of the 90s, or ever.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode eleven — Hammer into Anvil

Pride Goethe before a fall. To boldy Goethe where no one has gone before.

Just how well do you know your Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? 

Patrick Cargill is back from "Many Happy Returns" and in Number Six's crosshairs after he drives a woman to suicide two minutes into the episode. And so begins Six's campaign of vengeance via psychological warfare.

Featuring Basil Hoskins as Number Fourteen, the man who challenges Six to an ostensibly (per the script) dirty, not-according-to-Hoyle game of... Kosho.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode ten — Checkmate

We are all of us pawns, my dear, in this quintessential Prisoner episode that some observers believe should've aired third in the run but didn't surface until much later. Wherever it belongs, what is undisputed is that it combines an underdeveloped chess metaphor with another conspiracy to escape The Village and an important life lesson for Number Six about how one should treat one's fellows. You might say the real jailbreak was the friends he utterly failed to make along the way. 

But on the plus side, Peter Wyngarde is this episode's Number Two, and his scarf is longer than that worn by any prior runner-up. This is a post-The Avengers, pre-Department S, pre-Jason King Wyngarde performance, and certainly worthy of further study. Which is why Glen briefs (debriefs?) us on his arrest record.

Also starring Ronald Radd as Brian Cox, Rosalie Crutchley as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Patricia Jessel as Bea Arthur, and Basil Dignam as Luke Wilson.

Written by Gerald Kelsey

Directed by Don Chaffey

Initial airdate: November 24, 1967

PLUS: A mildly embarrassing correction! A deeply embarrassing confession! Listener mail! A discussion of Wyngarde's brief career as a recording artist, and a possibly triggering play-through of his 1970 single "Hippie & the Skinhead." Plus an unexpected detour into one of the darker corners the career of Mr. Tom Hanks, America's Reasonable Dad!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Write or send a voicemail to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Without Remorse" and What's Making Us Happy

Jodie Turner-Smith and Michael B. Jordan are Navy SEALS in Without Remorse. (Nadja Klier/Amazon Studios)

Michael B. Jordan has reached the point in a male movie star’s career where his name automatically gets thrown into the mix whenever a new adaptation of some ancient specimen of still-marketable IP is in the offing. Case in point: While Jordan is promoting Without Remorse, the first of an intended series of military shoot-’em-ups wherein he becomes I think the third actor to play John Clark — a special ops guy created by Cold War technoscribe Tom Clancy — reporters are asking him whether he’s going to be the next Superman.

For what it’s worth, I think Jordan would be a marvelous Superman — never mind that like recent (current?) Superman Henry Cavill, he is, through no fault of his own, shorter than I am. At the very least, I’d be more excited for that movie than I am for the already-announced follow-up to Without Remorse, a rote, dreary, boring, and humorless affair that boasts a great performance by Jodie Tuner-Smith as Clark’s commanding officer and very little else. It’s certainly the least of the big-screen Tom Clancy adaptations, unless 2002’s The Sum of All Fears (which had Liev Schreiber in the Clark role) is worse. I never saw that one. I heard Baltimore gets nuked in that movie.

I was glad to join Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, and Daisy Rosario to hash out our shared disappointment in Without Remorse on Pop Culture Happy Hour. And to shamelessly promote my podcast A Degree Absolute! and its upcoming guest bookings and its undisputed banger of a theme song once again.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode nine — Dance of the Dead

It's Carnival in The Village, and Dance of the Dead — an episode that was nearly scuttled on account of Patrick McGoohan's disdain for it (and refusal to shoot at least part of its climactic scene) — offers a fascinating glimpse into The Prisoner's conflicting aesthetic priorities.

Marry Morris, our latest Number Two, is a memorable malefactor whom my podcastin’ pardner Glen admits he’d like to have as his mom. (He also laments the undisciplined nature of her color-coded-or-not telephone system, and goads me into railing against the cosmic obliviousness of umbrella-users.)

You also get a great heel turn by Aubrey Morris, a haunting performance by Alan White as a doomed former colleague of The Prisoner, an oddly flat showing by Norma West as The Prisoner's observer, and some of the most haunting visual imagery of the entire series.