Yesterday, we had a little look at the location of the remake of The Prisoner. We also had a look at an old sci-fi pilot of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie's. If only there were some way to combine Fry, Laurie and The Prisoner…
Oh wait, there is! The Laughing Prisoner was the final (sort of) episode of popular Channel 4 music show The Tube, which was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. In it, Holland resigns from The Tube and is promptly taken away to the Village, where he finds the new Number 2 is Stephen Fry. Siouxsie and the Banshees are there, too, as is Hugh Laurie.
Given that Holland is a lifelong The Prisoner fan and somehow managed to get references to the show into just about everything he's ever done, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to discover it's desperately authentic and true to the original series, right down to being filmed in Portmeirion – it also includes plenty of clips from the series proper, so presents a good intro (sort of) to The Prisoner, if you've never seen it. And if you have seen, you'll probably be able to name every episode that gets referenced, as it's referenced.
Over to you, Mr YouTube. It doesn't properly kick off until a few minutes in, though.
August 21, 2008 | Reply
The Resident Fan Boy loved The Prisoner. He taped all the episodes and had me replicate, to the best of my ability, the weird lettering for the label on the cardboard cover and the spine of the cassette. (It was a bugger to do; this was obviously before we had children and thus had spare time.) I, alas, never "got" The Prisoner. Didn't get O Lucky Man or If either, two other pashes of RFB.
So I can't pretend get this, as clever as it undoubtedly is, given the talent involved. I'm delighted to see Siouxsie and the Banshees (whose cover of "The Passenger" is a favourite of mine) and XTC (presumably before their lead singer was crippled by stage fright), however.