Just when I think I can't love the Criterion Channel more than I do, they decide to include the entire series of Patrick McGoohan's groundbreaking The Prisoner. If you haven't seen it, shame on you, and take this opportunity to right the wrong and address an egregious cultural gap. It's sort of Twin Peaks before Twin Peaks, that is, a TV show so utterly bizarre and different that it changed our understanding of the potential of the medium. Patrick McGoohan plays No. Six, who is sort of like the secret agent he played in his earlier TV series Danger Man, although there's some debate over whether he's supposed to be or not. He tries to quit his job as an agent, but is gassed, kidnapped, and dropped into a village where he can't escape. Whenever he tries to leave a giant floating ball swallows him and brings him back - he great memory from my childhood. Oddly, and sadly, the paranoia of the series seems more relavent every year. Required viewing.
"I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own!"
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"
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