Be Seeing You

Patrick McGoohan, co-creator, lead actor, and primary force behind the classic TV show The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.

He'll be known - rightly, perhaps - most for that landmark 17-episode series . . .

. . . but he did plenty of other things in his career. I'm especially fond of his work as (in various combinations) actor, writer, and/or director on several episodes of Columbo, including a couple of the best ones (one of them is a season-ender that becomes almost as surreal as the final episode of The Prisoner -- Berit said when we watched it, "It's like the producers said, 'Who can we get to make sure this season goes out in the most weird-ass way possible? McGoohan!'"). The scenes where McGoohan and Peter Falk (who became great real-life friends) go up against each other, each taking on the distinctive acting mannerisms of the other as they play cat-and-mouse, are the high points of that other great show, for me.

But then, The Prisoner . . .

One of my Flickr friends, who goes by "moor_larkin," has a photostream that has been entirely dedicated to PMcG, his life, parts, and work, for some time now, with some great pictures of the man. You can see them HERE.

The Prisoner is currently {sigh} being remade by AMC, but one nice side-effect of this happening is that, for the time being, all episodes of the original are available online for free, streaming at the AMC site, so check them out if you haven't.

And of course, to end this, The Times had their noted song and video from 1983:

Be seeing you.