Before ‘Peaks,’ There Was ‘The Prisoner’

There’s joy in not knowing.

Devotees of ABC’s cryptic “Twin Peaks” affirmed that last season, treasuring its hairpin curves, blind alleys and often incomprehensible story that left them in a state of exquisite bewilderment. Yet this was hardly the first truly baffling series to air on American television.

In the summers of 1968 and 1969, for example, CBS aired a brainy and creative British serial that, while easier to track than “Twin Peaks,” was the prime-time enigma of its era.

What great fun it was to be puzzled by “The Prisoner,” Patrick McGoohan’s thinking-person’s series about a British government official whose abrupt resignation leads to his nightmarish incarceration in a village at once idyllic and surreal, and from which there appears no escape.

And what fun it is watching again on cable’s Arts & Entertainment network, where “The Prisoner” recently began airing at 11 p.m. Thursdays.

It never caught on widely in its earlier life. Perhaps American viewers weren’t ready for it, or American television wasn’t ready to give it the extended opportunity it deserved.

In any event, its sophisticated message preaching individualism is timeless. And after watching McGoohan’s resilient protagonist repeatedly resist brainwashing and plot escape from his anonymous captors, you’re left with the impression that all of us, no matter how independent, are prisoners of one thing or another (including television), to one degree or another.

Like “The Avengers,” another highly worthy British series that A & E has been rerunning, “The Prisoner” is an ingeniously crafted original that is populated by a spate of able British character actors in supporting roles, some of whom later went on to become prominent.

The soul of “The Prisoner,” however, is McGoohan. He not only created the series and wrote and directed some of the hour episodes, but also played the Prisoner, who, after being drugged and abducted from his London flat, awakens in a lovely, picturesque seaside hamlet where everything appears serene and perfect, the inhabitants are relentlessly cheerful and deferential and, instead of saying “goodby,” everyone forms an eye with their thumb and index finger and says, “Be seeing you!”

Yet the tone is ominous, for this comfortable existence is nothing less than a life of monotonic Muzak where dissent is not tolerated, individual personalities are submerged and the nameless hero is designated No. 6.

“I am not a number, I’m a person,” No. 6 protests.

But like the minority of villagers who have not yet been brainwashed, he’s continuously monitored by closed-circuit TV and harassed by mysterious white spheres when he approaches the island’s perimeter or attempts escape.

His brain still a storehouse of government secrets, he’s been brought to the village because “the information in your head is priceless,” McGoohan’s surly, ever-guarded, continually frustrated No. 6 is told. “They” want to know why he resigned.

But who are “they,” the British or others?

Each week No. 6 is interrogated in a command center by a different authority figure who is invariably designated No. 2 (the identity of No. 1 remains a mystery). And each week his captors design an elaborate charade to raise his hopes of escape, then bring them crashing down as they attempt to lower the guard and break the will of their star prisoner.

Only recently, No. 6 was sucked into an election for the position of No. 2 that was staged for his benefit. He won, but it was all a sham. Typically, the hour was both dark and funny, broadly satirizing both elections and media coverage of them, as well as British manners.

This Thursday’s episode finds No. 6 becoming a pawn in a game of human chess.

He won’t be broken, though. Says No. 2: “He’s an individual, and they’re always trouble.”

Who is No. 6? Is he Drake, the cynical, pragmatic hero of “Secret Agent,” an earlier British series starring McGoohan that aired on CBS? Who are these civil yet insidious people who keep No. 6 captive? What is the purpose of the dwarfish, umbrella-carrying butler who mysteriously appears in every episode? What about those ever-present spheres that resemble giant weather balloons? Will No. 6 escape? Do any of us ever escape our private prisons?

I never quite figured any of this out the first time I watched “The Prisoner,” but I’m older now, and wiser. Meanwhile. . . .

Be seeing you.

Blue Bloods: Meanwhile, being a person of enormous courage and refusing to be imprisoned by the biases of others, here is my own declaration of individualism: I hope the Braves, not the Dodgers, win the National League West title.

Ooooooh, I’ve said it. I’m out of the closet.

Does this mean that I--and my fellow Dodger dislikers in the Los Angeles area--are now persona non grata when it comes to watching local newscasts whose anchors insist on being cheerleaders for the home team, as if everyone in the audience shared their feelings? Are we now relegated to the junk heap of undesired demographics?

I like the way Fred Roggin handles this in his KNBC Channel 4 sportscasts by never presuming too much, always saying viewers will be happy or sad about a Dodger score if they’re fans of the team. That’s an important if .

The biggest rooters, on the other hand, are at KABC Channel 7, whose news anchors are continually “crossing our fingers” that the Dodgers will win. Hey! Get a life!

Why is editorializing appropriate for sports and not for the rest of the news? You don’t hear these super-fans cheering on Judge Clarence Thomas or rooting for Serbia to blitz Croatia.

There must be some way to stem this hemorrhaging of Dodger blue in newscasts. I’m crossing my fingers.