In PRESTIGE PREHISTORY, Pop Heist critic Sean T. Collins takes a look at classic TV shows that paved the way for the New Golden Age of Television — challenging, self-contained stories from writers and filmmakers determined to push the medium forward by telling stories their own way.
The Prisoner Episode 10 (airdate order) / Episode 9 (AVC order)*
"It's Your Funeral"
Original Airdate: Dec. 8, 1967
Writer: Michael Cramoy
Director: Robert Asher
Cast: Patrick McGoohan, Derren Nesbitt, Annette Andre, André Van Gyseghem, Martin Miller, Mark Eden, Wanda Ventham
*NOTE: The Prisoner's proper running order is a matter of dispute; Pop Heist is using the AV Club order for the show
On May 27, 1942, members of the Czech resistance killed a monster. Though the assassination itself was a comedy of errors involving jammed machine guns and "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades" grenade throws, Reich Protector Reynard Heidrich, the brutal overseer of Czechoslovakia and a prime mover of the Holocaust, died of his wounds several days later.
In response, the Nazis swept into the village of Lidice, which was wrongfully suspected to have hid co-conspirators, and wiped it out. They executed 340 people, including every male resident over the age of 14, as well as 82 children, who were gassed to death after being transported to a concentration camp.
In this episode of The Prisoner, a clockmaker Villager played by actor Martin Miller, a Czech Jew, plots to assassinate the Village's overseer, Number Two. In that context, I think Number Six can be forgiven for what he does, or doesn't do, next.
One thing Six doesn't do is make an attempt to escape. As in its most recent predecessors (according to the running order we're using), "The General" and "A. B. and C.," "It's Your Funeral" does not chronicle one of Six's legendary breaks for it by land, sea, or air. Instead, he's once again drawn deeper into the business of the Village itself. This time, however, he's not trying to defy its masters, but save them … from themselves?
It's complicated, but it's damned entertaining, in large part thanks to the new Number Two. Played by the distinctive-looking actor Derren Nesbitt, he's a swinging '60s type with bleached-blond hair, massive black-rimmed glasses, a red smoking jacket when the mood takes him, and teeth so green they make Johnny Rotten look like the inventor of veneers. If this man was not a style inspiration for Austin Powers, you can shag me rotten, baby, yeah!
Anyway, we learn early on that Number Two is up to his mossy choppers in whatever the hell is going on in the Village this time.
One night, a beautiful blonde woman designated Number 50 (Annette Andre) enters through a suspiciously unlocked door to warn Six there's an assassination planned that will unleash vicious reprisals on innocent Villagers should it succeed. Six is willing to give her a fair hearing — Number Two tells the bald, bespectacled Supervisor that Six can't resist "a lady in distress," which has been true from the jump — but he naturally assumes it's an attempt to manipulate him, as such things usually are.
Ah, but that's just what they think themselves, 50 tells him. For some time, there's been an underground subculture/network in the Village called Jammers, people who make up fake plots against the powers that be to keep them busy with bullshit. Fifty's concern is that those same people will falsely believe this latest scheme to be a ruse, when it's in fact real as hell.
Number Six spends the next day under the watchful eye of a predictive model, overseen by a different beautiful blonde (Wanda Ventham), that can anticipate even the most unusual aspects of his day. (There's even a great, prescient gag about the AI refusing to tell its makers whether or not it's reliable.) Whether this includes Six's daily game of kosho, a rousing combat sport involving trampolines, red union suits, and a pool of water, is up to you.
During the game, Number 100 (Mark Eden), one of Two's lieutenants, swaps Six's wristwatch out with a broken one. This leads him to the Watchmaker (Miller), who as it happens is 50's father. Mitteleuropean by accent and decor, he's conspiring with 100 (a double agent, working for Two all along) to stage a real assassination.
Kind of.
But Two blithely insists he's in no danger at all. And so does the other Number Two (André Van Gyseghem), a sweaty older man for whom the blond-haired green-toothed Number Two is the interim replacement and "heir presumptive." That Number Two even plays a series of obviously doctored recordings in which Six warns a series of previously unseen Numbers Two that they're marked for death.
What this Two doesn't count on is that the faked footage is aimed as much at him as they are at Six. The younger Two knows full well that the Watchmaker's plot is serious — and he's been egging it on, because his older predecessor is the real target!
The still-unseen Number One, who remains an unheard presence on the other end of those brightly colored plastic phones, wants the older Number Two dead. Why? Unclear (though Number Six mordantly jokes it's to save on pension costs). The younger Two, who'll be taking over the position, is more than happy to help. He's involved Number Six because he knows the older Two will dismiss him and the Watchmaker alike as mere Jammers. Old Two will think they're crying wolf and ignore them, lulling him into a false sense of security.
Now Six, who puzzles all this out, has two reasons to stop the assassination, or as he more accurately labels it, execution: to mess with Number One and the Village's masters by saving one of their targets, and to save the innocent Villagers from the reprisals he knows will come if Number Two is killed by a Villager, even if the powers-that-be are allowing it to happen. That's right: It's the Ghorman plot from Andor, which is as influenced by real-world events as this show was.
Breaking into the Watchmaker's shop with his daughter, Six discovers how the deed is to be done. The old man plans to detonate plastic explosives hidden in Number Two's huge golden Seal of Office medallion, bearing the Village's familiar penny-farthing bicycle logo. Only worn during big official events (we've never seen it before), the medallion is to be transferred from the old Two to his blond successor at the ceremony. The young Two's plan is for it to blow up before that handoff can take place, obviously.
But Six is on the case. Scouting the area the day of the ceremony, he spots the Watchmaker in the nearby bell tower, preparing to use the transmitter he built to serve as a radio-control detonator. With 50 by his side, he races to the tower and wrests the detonator from the hands of the old man and defeats 100 in hand-to-hand combat when the minion tries to stop him.
He then runs back to the "Appreciation Day" ceremony at which the two Twos are celebrated. (Tyrants love throwing themselves little parades!). By now, the new Number Two is thoroughly miserable, since the handoff has taken place and he's wearing the bomb medallion. The old Number Two, meanwhile, is practically hysterical with relief that he's been spared, as he'd come to believe Six's warnings after all.
But there's still the matter of escape — the old Two's rather than Six's this time. Number Six instructs the guy to make a run for the helicopter. Meanwhile, he physically prevents the new Two from removing his new Seal of Office, holding the detonator the whole time as insurance. This gives the old Two the chance he needs to escape in the helicopter … although it takes an indeterminate sharp curve as the episode ends, leaving the man's fate, no pun intended, up in the air.
From a visual perspective, this is a much less mind-bending episode than its predecessors. (Derren Nesbitt excepted.) Indeed, the Watchmaker and his quaint, cozy shop feel like a pointedly earthy and real response to the gigantic computer room of "The General" or the huge big-screen lab in "A. B. and C." Clocks are a technology made with human hands to help people, not science-fantasy mind-wiping machines.
Yet there's still that wonderful sense of never quite being sure if you're stepping on solid ground. Take the Two Numbers Two situation, for instance. When the older Two shows up, quite unexpectedly, he acts as though both Number Six and we in the audience have seen him many times before, and that the bottle-blond to whom we were first introduced is merely his substitute and successor. I believe the word "interim" is even used.
But we've only had one example so far of any Number Two returning, the turtlenecked fellow from the last two episodes, and things went quite poorly for that guy. In order for the status and order of succession for these Twos to make sense, the show simply expects us to infer it, using our powers of observation and judgment — to both keep up and play along. It wants us to do our share of the work.
Which is exactly what the Village now expects of Six. Once again, it's enveloped him in a scheme which requires his active participation in the civic life of the Village. Once again, it induces him to sacrifice his own interests (he makes it quite clear he'd be happy to see any given Number Two dead as long as no one else gets hurt as result) for the greater good of the Villagers.
It seems Number One's plan to kill the outgoing Number Two in a plausibly deniable way was foiled by Number Six. But the larger plan of getting Number Six to think of himself not as a free man but as a number is moving forward, inch by inch. It turns out that when you can convince decent people their mistakes could cost hundreds, thousands of other people's lives, they start thinking the way you need them to. Decency is required to think about other people's lives as inherently worth saving in the first place.
