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THE PRISONER, a small sci-fi fantasy show from the UK, has built up a cult following that is possibly second only to the great STAR TREK fanbase in its fanatical pursuit. The show itself has generated debates, analyses and musings on its meanings that its more mainstream challengers could never hope to match and the arguments over the show continue to this very day despite the fact that it is now more than 40 years old.

What is the enduring appeal of this show?

Let's get the simple bit out of the way first - the format. An operative of a secret organisation resigns (in the pre-credits sequence each week) and is gassed before he can make his way out of the country. He wakes up in a place called the Village, an artificial community where people of value like himself are controlled and manipulated, their secrets being either uncovered of kept. The prisoner, now known only as Number 6, is determined to escape and tell his captors nothing. They are determined to find out the answer to one simple question - why did he resign? They are willing to use all kinds of dirty tricks, drugs, mind control, hypnosis and anything else that they can think of to get the answer they need. He constantly thwarts them, but they constantly thwart his attempts to escape.

If it were as simple as its format, of course, the show would now be lost in the memory, mentioned as an aside in scholarly books on the subject of television science fiction, but the presentation and content of the show went off on all kinds of tangents and took in many subjects such as computer aided learning, mind control, the freedom of the press, the nature of identity, society and freedom, sometimes quite openly and sometimes in quite bizarre ways that are so full of imagery that they are open to interpretation in many ways.

And it is this bizarreness, the surreality and strangeness of the show that brings viewers back time and time again to plumb the depths of its meaning and look for answers. Is the Village a microcosm of society, showing us all to be in thrall to the visible face of authority (the village leader Number 2 is always changing, like Presidents and Prime Ministers, but always wants the same thing), but ultimately the driving force behind our own imprisonment? Do we repress those that frighten us by their difference, demanding conformity or death? Is society, in fact, the inevitable death of individuality?

It sounds far too deep and convoluted to be any fun whatsoever, but it often bright, cheerful and

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