Introduction

Towards the end of Danger Man's third series George Markstein, the script editor on the show, began evolving the idea for a brand new series. He brought the idea to Patrick McGoohan who realised it could be a possibility to move on once his stint as John Drake was over. Markstein always envisaged The Prisoner character as John Drake, although McGoohan maintained he was not.

The fourth series of Danger Man was to be aired in 1966 and the first to be in colour, the first two episodes were called 'Koroshi' and 'Shinda Shima', but production was halted after McGoohan said he did not want to go on playing the secret agent. Lew Grade, the head of TV company ITC, hoped to persuade McGoohan to carry on but to no avail. The two filmed episodes were finally shown in most UK regions as a special TV movie and joined together with some extra footage to link them.

McGoohan approached Lew Grade about a new series based on his idea of a man fighting to escape from a village where he is taken to against his will. The idea appealed to Grade and he sanctioned the series hoping to sell it to the U.S. on the back of McGoohan's fame in Danger Man (titled Secret Agent in the U.S.). When McGoohan pitched the idea to Grade he brought a treatment, script outlines, photos of a possible film location and a provisional budget, Grade confessed to not really understanding the story, but trusting his business intuition he agreed to finance the series.

McGoohan's production company, Everyman Films Ltd, was contracted to produce 13 episodes of the series and if things went well ITC would commision further episodes up to a maximum of thirty - 17 were finally produced. The Prisoner was born and no other series has come close to the style and content ever since.....................