Part 6:
Who is Number One?
3. INT. DAY.
NUMBER 2'S CONTROL ROOM
A NEW
NUMBER 2 IS SITTING IN THE CHAIR. SHE IS AN AGED WOMAN.
NUMBER
9190771: Who are you?
NUMBER
2: I am the new Number 2.
NUMBER
9190771: Who is Number 1?
NUMBER
2: You are Number 9190771!
Fifteen years
ago, Dennis Potter was at the height of his success as a television
writer. As Rosalind Coward writes, the accolades were high: 'Critics are
claiming that with the success of his last production, The Singing Detective,
he has established himself as the first great television writer' (118).
She then goes on to criticize the transfer of literary values to the small
screen. Indeed, the BBC celebrated fifty years of television in 1986,
which is a long time to wait for a great writer to arrive. In the ten
years that passed since The Singing Detective, Potter's reputation rose
considerably, especially when, in 1994, it was revealed that he was
dying. Famously, his dying wish was to have two last works produced
simultaneously by the BBC and Channel Four. They were broadcast in 1996:
Karaoke was no Detective, and Cold Lazarus positively stank (it featured a
decomposing head). Thus, A. A. Gill declared that Potter was
'Overindulged to the bitter end', and showed the heights of his own
literary talent by renaming the writer 'Pennis Dotter' - the final indignity
(119).
Karaoke was not helped by Potter's tendency to recycle past
works. Daniel Feeld does bear more than a passing resemblance to The
Singing Detective's Philip Marlow. Feeld writes for television, while
Marlow wrote pulp; Feeld suffers from cancer, while Marlow suffered
Psoriasis (and Potter was stricken by both). It was an error to have so
many hospital scenes: the memory of Marlow in his dressing gown was still too
fresh (although this is no doubt intentional - Feeld does declare that he's the
Singing Detective at one point). Patrick McGoohan also had a tendency to
inscribe his own life within his work. For instance, the date of birth
the Prisoner gives in Arrival is McGoohan's own (120). Max Hora writes
that 'Once Upon a Time is closely based on McGoohan's own early life'
(121). An inconsistency seems to arise from this: Number 6 would have
been too young to have been a prisoner of war. The question arises of what made
The Singing Detective stand out, while Lipstick on your Collar et al failed
(despite the presence of Ewan McGregor). The answer may be that The
Singing Detective owed a great deal to The Prisoner. McGoohan's
protagonist finds that he has been imprisoned by himself, whilst Marlow complains
that he is 'a prisoner inside my... own skin and bones' (122). Themes of
imprisonment abound within The Singing Detective. There is an allusion to
Lazarus within the same scene (123), whilst Number 2 is resurrected in Fall
Out, by a 'welfare' state that will not even let its citizens 'rest in
peace'. In the manner of their initial reception, The Prisoner and
Cold Lazarus would seem to be alike. When Fall Out ended, the ITV
switchboard was tied up for hours by people ringing in to complain - The
Prisoner was deeply unpopular (124).
However, The Prisoner did have the potential to be more
successful later on. This colourful series was hampered on its first
showing by the fact that it was broadcast in monochrome: 'Channel Four in
England showed the series in colour and, for the first time in its country of
origin, without cuts and on a national network' (125). Thus The Prisoner
had to wait until 1984, suitably enough, before it could be appreciated
fully. Cold Lazarus does not have similar potential for latent
appreciation, although it could possibly be served by reduction to
monochrome. The fact that it was shown in early 1984 suggests that The
Prisoner could well have provided inspiration for The Singing Detective in
1986. Suspiciously, it would seem that the episodes written and directed
by McGoohan himself were the source: Free For All, Once Upon a Time, and Fall
Out.
If anyone has a legitimate claim for television authorship,
then it must be McGoohan. On these three episodes, he had unprecedented
power. Not only was he the leading actor, he was also the executive
producer, the writer, and the director. Dennis Potter cared passionately
about television, something he strongly conveyed in his James MacTaggert
lecture (126). Indeed, in the early sixties, he had been employed as the
television critic for a popular daily newspaper. Therefore it is possible
that he knew of McGoohan's many roles in the production of The Prisoner.
In Free For All, the Prisoner visits the Village night-club, The Cat and
Mouse. Likewise, Marlow's alter ego, Binney, visits the also very aptly
named Skinscapes. Number 6 is accompanied by Number 58, an eastern
European who does not speak English. Binney meets the Russian,
Sonia. There is a nautical theme to both clubs, as all the women wear
sailor's hats. Sonia is obviously a prostitute; Number 2 suggests that
the Prisoner make whatever use of Number 58 'within reason'.
L.S. Kauffman writes that 'men's oppression of women
is a fundamental historical reality' (127). Never is that manifested more
widely than in the fictions - and no doubt reality - of the Cold War.
Binney is under no illusions that Sonia is a spy. He differs from Number
6 in that he sleeps with her. From the Prisoner's first contact with the
maid in Arrival, he is offered female companionship on a regular basis.
There can be no doubt that the 'Woman' in the same episode, had to sleep with
the previous helicopter pilot in order to gain the Electropass. As Number
6 is brutally humiliated by Number 58 (slapped in the face), so Binney is
diminished by Sonia in retaliation for the way he strikes her.
Psychoanalysis features in both series. Number 2
attempts to psychoanalyse the Prisoner's career in the Embryo Room, so
'Marlow's development is structured as a psychoanalytic investigation',
conducted by Doctor Gibbon (128). As a boy, Marlow had defecated on his
teacher's table in an attempt to be noticed, a cry for help. The school
teacher realises that he is involved, and attempts to extract a confession from
him. The fact that she is torturing Marlow is made explicit by a
comparison with a similar scene in Once Upon a Time. The Prisoner is
regressed to an incident in school, where he refused to confess who was talking
in class.
Both series use the spy/detective genre, and abide by its
rules. For instance, the 'film noir heroine is sexually alluring but
potentially treacherous' (129). At the end of The Chimes of Big Ben, the
Prisoner discovers that Nadia has deceived him throughout. Marlow
constantly fantasises that his wife, Nicola, is trying to betray him somehow or
another. According to Ken Worpole, such women are always 'threatening to
emasculate or betray the stoical heroes on their lonely journeys', and
that the '"tough guy" novel is... predicated on a deep ambiguity
about sexual identity' (130). Indeed, Worpole mentions that there is a
strong case for arguing that Raymond Chandler's Marlowe is homosexual.
Binney is certainly misogynistic. Another necessary element of the
Detective/spy genre is the 'final shoot out' (131), and so the three rebels
escape from the Village under cover of automatic gun fire, and the Singing
Detective shoots it out with the two Mysterious men in the hospital. The
reason that they have come in search of their author is their realisation
that they do not even know their own names. We never get to learn the
Prisoner's.
So, any similarity between these two programmes could be
explained by genre. However, the fact that both protagonists meet
themselves in the end is something that only they share in the detective genre.
One of Potter's most famous devices, which he uses to disrupt a naturalistic
scene, is that of the dance number:
Without
any hesitation or change of expression,
characters step out of the play and into a
rendition... of the number, miming to the
original voice... and frequently adding a snappy
little dance routine (132).
Ten
years before Potter first used this device, in Pennies from Heaven, a certain
hippie rebel, Number 48, disturbed proceedings in Fall Out by insistently
singing a Negro spiritual. Eighteen years later, 'Dem bones' somehow managed to
find their way to the first episode of The Singing Detective (in exactly the
same scene which alludes to Lazarus and imprisonment). There are other
ways in which McGoohan was innovative in The Prisoner:
Whereas
as in a normal piece of editing... the
character enters from the right, moves across the
picture to leave in on the left hand side then into
another shot, the Prisoner sees the bell tower,
climbs it, surveys the Village, hears the bell,
descends, crosses the square, arrives at the
restaurant - all in the space of some fifteen
seconds! (133).
In a similar way, the story of the Prisoner's resignation features in the
opening credits of every episode. The story is told with such economy,
every shot reduced to its barest essential. We know we are being tricked
- we know the spy is going on holiday becauuse he packs his suitcase with
pictures of palm trees (which is hardly realistic) - but we still fall for it.
As Carraze and Oswald put it, 'there is still no word to describe a television
poem' (134). By contrast, Cold Lazarus strolls along at pedestrian
pace. The scenes are far too long, and there is too much 'telling'
instead of 'showing'. Ciaran Hinds is a fine actor, who can physically
mutate his body to fit any role. In Lazarus, however, he is burdened by
the most appalling accent. The futuristic cars are fantastically slow
(and that may be the point), and the hairstyles are dreadful. In fact,
the most animated aspect of Lazarus is the frozen head. One could
construct a reading in which that is the central point. You cannot help
but feel for Feeld when he realises that immortality means perpetual
imprisonment within his brain. This is greatly realised in the scene
where Feeld is dying, his spirit flying towards the metaphorical light at the
end of the tunnel - only to be rudely pulled back when his body is
cryogenically frozen. The impression that Potter was influenced by The
Prisoner can only be confirmed by the fact that Patrick McGoohan was also
considered for the role of Daniel Feeld (135).
Return to our Patrick McGoohan page to read the next part of Kevin Patrick Mahoney's The Anarchic Prisoner
118). Rosalind Coward, 'Dennis Potter and the question of the Television Author', in Critical Quarterly, Vol.29, No.4, Winter 1987, p.3.
119). A. A. Gill, 'Overindulged to the Bitter End', The Sunday Times: Culture, 28 April 1996, pp.12-13.
120). Carraze, op. cit. p.36.
121). Hora, op. cit. p.48.
122). Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective, Faber and Faber, 1986, p.28.
123). Ibid., p.27.
124). Carraze, op. cit. p.226.
125). Ibid., p.226.
126). Dennis Potter, Seeing the Blossom, Faber and Faber, pp.31-56.
127). Kauffman, Special Delivery, p.250.
128). Joost Hunningher, 'The Singing Detective', in George W. Brandt, ed. British Television Drama in the 1980s, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p.239.
129). David Bordwell et al, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Routledge, 1985, p.76.
130). Ken Worpole, Dockers and Detectives, Verso, 1983, p.44.
131). Ibid., p.44.
132). Philip Purser, 'Dennis Potter', in George W. Brandt, ed. British Television Drama, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 185.
133). Carraze, op. cit. p.220.
134).
Ibid., p.45.
135). Sean Day-Lewis, The Daily Telegraph, April 24, 1996, p.21.
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