Inside the "Prisoner": Radical Television and Film in the 1960s (Paperback)

The integrity of this book may be judged by comparing a comment on the back cover with a section of the main text:

Back cover:
"Rakoff - who was intended by McGoohan to play a key role in the scripting of future episodes - now reveals how the series could have developed, then and now."

Main text (p.176, col. 1)
"McGoohan's promise that I'd have four episodes in the next tranche of the series was perhaps not seriously meant. It was probably only a well-meaning apology for having abandoned me in order to be free to go to Hollywood."

In order to get this book in perspective you need to take full note of the subtitle - "radical television and film in the 1960s".
An even more accurate subtitle would have been "Ian Rakoff, an autobiographical account of how I came to England and worked on a few films, and served as assistant editor on a couple of episodes of 'The Prisoner', during the 1960s".

As Rakoff himself admits, he came "in at the tail end of things" (p23) as far as the making and editing of The Prisoner was concerned, and apart from a few brief and highly uncommunicative meetings with McGoohan, whatever he (Rakoff) knew about the series was gossip and hearsay.
His version of the nature of the original 'Rover', for example, is clearly not from personal experience, and conflicts with evidence that there really was a blue VW 'beetle' with flashing light.
He also suggests, for no good reason, that production manager Bernard Williams came up with the idea of using weather balloons; which doesn't tally with the more widespread report that McGoohan fortuitously spotted a weather balloon in flight and gave Williams the task turning this into a practical replacement for the VW bug.

Not surprisingly, then, even that section of the main text that deals with the TV series (pages 23-100) consists almost entirely of vague anecdotes that are more likely to be of interest to film and TV technicians than to fans of the TV series. Nor is this section of the book entirely given over to items related to the making of The Prisoner, but regularly wanders off into pure autobiography, as in Chapters 5 and 7, for example.

Having said all that, it might seem that Rakoff is still a key witness as to the concepts and philosophy behind the TV series. After all, he did work as a writer on the series, didn't he?

Well yes, sort of.
It turns out that Rakoff wrote the basic story for the episode 'Living in Harmony' - but had very little to do with the final script. Indeed, on viewing the initial screening he comments:

"For a moment I couldn't believe I'd written any of what I was seeing. It seemed familiar but from somewhere far away and long ago. Dialogues struck chords." (p.98)

The fact is that Rakoff based his own story on material in Gene Autrey (cowboy) comics of the 1950s. It's relevance to the central themes of The Prisoner was, (given his very limited time on the project), almost co-incidental. And the episode as it was filmed and screened, owed nearly everything to series producer David Tomblin - who is credited as producer, scriptwriter and director on this particular episode.

In short, if you're keen to lay your hands on 'anything' that relates to The Prisoner then you'll pobaby want to own this book as well.
If, however, you're looking for material that provides genuine insights into this most enigmatic of all TV series then there are far better ways of spending your money.

Some of the anecdotes are wonderful - Rakoff's excitement at finding a priceless collection of comicbooks for a song, for instance, or his chance meeting of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. In this way, the book conveys something of the special air of those times, as well as capturing the moral atmosphere of the times.

As such, the true interest of the book is precisely the autobiographical nature of the book - this does not intrude, as a previous reviewer suggests, indeed, it is crucial.

In short, essential reading for those who want to know more about the colour and texture of these very interesting times.

The author joined the series initially as an assistant film editor, having previously worked on a variety of features and documentaries. After helping salvage a number of Prisoner episodes, he was commissioned by McGoohan to devise and write the series' western Living in Harmony, an experience which proved both exhilarating and devastating.

This experience was to be the turning point in his perception of filmmaking which prepared him later to assist Lindsay Anderson on the making of Anderson's explosive If...., still a celebrated moment of British cinema.

Rich in humour, anecdote and personal observation, Inside The Prisoner relates the history of its time through the eyes, ears and words of many major and minor filmmakers including Nic Roeg, Donald Cammell, Michael Winner, Roman Polanski, Stephen Frears and Lindsay Anderson, all of whom are brought vividly to life in this colourful account.