Patrick McGoohan

• LESSONS from lockdown?

Worth revisiting 1960s TV series The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan), where “The Village”, masquerading as a seaside paradise, is under constant surveillance.

Everyone’s movements are tracked and traced, residents identified by numbers, plus curfews, vigilance, interrogation tactics, disregard for privacy or family rights, hyped-up alarms.

“There’s always the risk of infection from the untouchables” (episode 12 A Change of Mind); appeals to sneaks and informers, draconian fines for breaking the rules, group think “innocent people will be blamed”, mass marketing and rigged elections by the powers-that-be, “Thursday is Appreciation Day to show our gratitude” (episode 11); humans wanly accepting the prison of their own making, “Stay alert”, they are told.

Technological “progress” offered as “benevolent”; villagers, while monitored, mined for data on others and suddenly become law-breakers, “Failure to co-operate makes one an outcast”.

Into this the British secret agent, “Number 6”, is monitored by drones, subjected to mind-control tranquillisers, dream manipulation, indoctrination, and subjugated to controllers.

He maintains: “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered.” But he is.

How are we in 2021?

MIKE BOR
St George’s Fields, W2