Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Patrick McGoohan 1928-2009

While driving to Northampton today, I heard on the radio the sad news that Patrick McGoohan had died at the age of eighty. I have never seen the old "Secret Agent" show in which he starred and first gained great fame, but his follow-up TV series, "The Prisoner", blew my mind when I saw it for the first time in the late 1960's. In the realm of extremely cool and memorable shows, it was a very close second to the original "Star Trek" series in my estimation. -- PL

6 comments:

Bookgal said...

Oh wow...I saw some of the Prisoner as a kid and I remember it scaring me, although I can't really recall what about it did so. I remember liking the actor though.

GreenWillow said...

Oh, gosh.... that is sad.

I loved "Secret Agent", but it was in Disney's "Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" that he really got to me.

Oh, now I'm feeling all nostalgic....

Mayhem said...

The Prisoner was one of the greatest TV shows of all time; thankfully someone was as nuts as Patrick was (Lew Grade) to commission the thing! Thanks for all the memories and giving everyone a complete mindscrew with the ending ;)

~ tOkKa said...

-->> Double whammy for Pete's fandom, Ricardo Montalbán ..

Star Trek's "Khan" has also passed.


;(

>v<

Unknown said...

I remember watching The Prisoner when it first aired in the US. My brother hated it, but I loved it.

They are redoing The Prisoner with Ian Mckellan as Number 2, but you can see whole episodes of the original series at the AMC website here:

http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/

sakai

Splinter's Iroonna said...

When I was in 5th grade, the boys in my class were all excited because Douglas had brought in some magazine that had the lyrics to "Secret Agent"...

I never got into "The Prisoner" but it amazes me that it only had 17 episodes, yet still maintains such a following.

He was a great actor.