A Degree Absolute!

Chris freestyles and epic poem about getting his iPhone replaced and eventually he and Glen dig deep into the too-long-neglected mailbag. Casey sings a reader-penned jingle. Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail! Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts! Follow @NotaNumberPod! Our song: "A Degree Absolute!" Music and Lyrics by Chris K...

Maximum Fun? More like maximum security! Maximum Fun podcast network founder and San Francisco native Jesse Thorn joins us this week to tunnel through the crumbling walls of Escape From Alcatraz, the 1979 Clint Eastwood -starring dramatization of the real 1962 prison break, featuring Patty McG as…The Warden. Stunt casting doesn't get any stuntier, though Glen and I differ on exactly how much The A...

DID YOU KNOW that Columbophiles are properly nomenclatured Columboheads or Trenchcoatheads ? DID YOU KNOW that fans who divide their sympathies equally among Patrick McGoohan and Peter Falk are formally designated McGalks ? Pal Linda Holme s joins Glen & Chris to investigate Patty McG's historic run as a four-time Columbo killer / five-time Columbo director. Brandon Routh , the George Lazenby of S...

Vulture TV critic and noted Lindelofologist Jen Chaney joins us to examine the influence of THE PRISONER on subsequent stranded-by-the-seaside puzzle-box shows like LOST. Plus we once again pop The Hatch on the mailbag. Read Jen's definitive oral history of the LOST finale here ! Follow her on Twitter here ! Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail! Leave us a five-star rev...

Patty McG has claimed he was driven out of England after this puzzling final episode of The Prisoner debuted on Feb. 1, 1968. McGoohan admitted to financier Lew Grade that he'd been bluffing a year prior when he told the moneyman that he had an ending in mind for the strange new series he'd proposed. While this episode certainly reflects its creator's exasperation and exhaustion, it's more satisfy...

I (Chris) have long suspected The Prisoner is a show with a particular appeal to creative people, and I love to be proven right.  Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling is a Prisoner-inspired punk duo comprised of filmmakers/musicians/writers/creators/etc. Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein . When we saw their video for "Arrival" — a meticulous, two-years-in-the making recreation of The Prisoner 's o...

Shot in December 1966 under the title "Degree Absolute" and not broadcast until more than a year later when it became The Prisoner's penultimate — and, we agree, ultimate — episode, "Once Upon a Time" is the real thing. A bottle episode that locks GOAT Number Two Leo McKern and Number Six in the black-box "Embryo Room" and compels them to reenact the Seven Ages of Man that that glover's son from S...

Chris and Glen respond to listener email and then take up a tactical position on the western emplacement of Glen's Remote Mountain Stronghold to discuss their IRL reunion and promised viewing of Rob Marshall 's Best Picture-winning 2002 film version of John Kander & Fred Ebb's Chicago. Which has precisely nothing to do with The Prisoner but hey, we are, famously, a tangent-tolerant podcast. Then t...

What If Jimmy Page played a session with Stillwater? Our podcastin' inspiration Matt Gourley joins us for a Cinerama epic of an episode that we didn't plan to release on Father's Day week, but the cookie happened to crumble serendipitously. Because our subject is a genuine, certified, no-foolin' Dad Movie, Ice Station Zebra , based on The Guns of Navarone author Alistair MacLean 's novel Ice Stati...

Number Six must elude the tender embrace of a lady who probably uses pseudonyms at least as often as he does in a late-in-the-run-but-lavish filler episode that sends up the spy genre circa '67 & burns plenty of Sir Lew Grade's money. (He refused to finance a floated 90-minute version.) Justine Lord and Kenneth Griffiths are your magnificent guest stars, and Patty McG appears to be having a grand...

Prolific screenwriter, prosewriter, comic book writer, and podcaster Ben Blacker — co-creator of the magnificent monthly-live-show-turned-podcast The Thrilling Adventure Hour, and its delightful Western parody feature, Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars, among his many other notable and impressive credentials — joins us this week to dissect "Living in Harmony," perhaps the curviest of The Prisoner 's...

It seems Patty McG had softened his "don't call it television because television cuts corners and we'll never ever do that" position by the time of The Prisoner 's much-abbreviated second and final season, because for most of the production of this week's episode he decided his time would be better spent in Los Angeles co-starring in John Sturges' unmemorable 1968 thriller Ice Station Zebra with R...

Number Six's Public Enemy Number Six act is getting tired — and what is alternately referred to within a single scene as The Committee, The Council, and The Commission will tolerate it for only so long before they decree that their prize captive must undergo Instant Social Conversion. It's a procedure so chilling that Number Eighty-Six (the marvelous Angela Browne ) must narrate it step-by-step, a...

There's an assassination plot afoot in The Village, and Number Six must protect his oppressor to spare his fellow Villagers. Derren Nesbitt is our Number Two and Annette Andre is our Girl Friday. Neither one of them could stand their scene partner an (uncredited) director, Patty McG . Pink-blazered henchman Mark Eden didn't hate him, but he did resent his attempt to strangle him on camera. This cr...

Pride Goethe before a fall. To boldy Goethe where no one has gone before. Just how well do you know your Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ? Patrick Cargill is back from "Many Happy Returns" and in Number Six's crosshairs after he drives a woman to suicide two minutes into the episode. And so begins Six's campaign of vengeance via psychological warfare. >Featuring Basil Hoskins as Number Fourteen, the ma...

We are all of us pawns, my dear, in this quintessential Prisoner episode that some observers believe should've aired third in the run but didn't surface until much later. Wherever it belongs, what is undisputed is that it combines an underdeveloped chess metaphor with another conspiracy to escape The Village and an important life lesson for Number Six about how one should treat one's fellows. You...

It's Carnival in The Village, and Dance of the Dead — an episode that was nearly scuttled on account of Patrick McGoohan 's disdain for it (and refusal to shoot at least part of its climactic scene) — offers a fascinating glimpse into The Prisoner 's conflicting aesthetic priorities. Marry Morris , our latest Number Two, is a memorable malefactor whom Glen admits he'd like to have as his mom. He a...

The first half of this episode is dialogue-free! This episode of The Prisoner , that is, not this episode of A Degree Absolute!, though that's the sort of formal experimentation we'd be game to try. Anywho, Number Six awakens in an inexplicably raptured Village and opts for the seaborne escape route, where starvation, pirates, and intrigue await. As does Georgina Cookson , on whom Glen has develop...

SPOILERS AHOY for the entirety of the 54-year-old television series The Prisoner! You've been warned! Save this episode for later if you haven't yet seen the whole series! Lifelong Prisoner fan Alex Cox joins Chris to talk about his 2017 book I Am Not a Number: Decoding the Prisoner , and What It's All About. Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail! Follow @NotaNumberPod!...

Glen is under the influence of digital vermouth and under the spell of John Castle in our dissection of "The General." Wherein Number Six gets anger-cruised and Kirks a computer, and Colin Gordon "returns" as Number Two from "A.B. & C." — an episode obviously intended to follow this one, but which was broadcast before — apparently having survived his encounter with a tumescent scarlet telephone ha...

Number Six comes face-to-immobile-face with the only opponent who can truly make him doubt his resolve: Himself! It's the The Parent Trap episode. It's "Mirror, Mirror" episode. It's the Double Impact episode. It's the if-I'm-not-me-who-da-hell-am-I-episode. It's the episode that teaches us that fingering an electric socket may on rare occasions be quite necessary, despite what your parents and te...

It's election time in The Village and Number Six is the frontrunner! Eric Portman , this episode's Number Two, greets him thus: "Good morning, good morning! Any complaints?" And of course Six has complaints. He's like Portnoy: famed for his complaints. Featuring the lovely Rachel Herbert as Number Fifty-Eight, his irrepressibly enthusiastic and enthusiastically unintelligible driver/assistant/etc....

Chris and Glen revisit the first of The Prisoner 's nonessential episodes. It features Peter Bowles telling Patrick McGoohan "I want you," a classic John McClane -style air-shaft constitutional, some dodgy fisticuffs, the plot of the 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception, and a milk-drinking Colin Gordon as a Number Two menaced by an alarmingly erotic red phone. Nonessential, you say? Will we ever...

Number Six attempts to escape The Village with the help of a newcomer named Nadia and a "basically primitive" abstract art project with a hard-to-overlook nautical vibe. He also finds out where The Village is. Unequivocally. Indisputably. Maybe. Featuring the first of the great Leo McKern's appearances as Number Two! Follow us @NotaNumberPod Write us at @degreeabsoluteatgmail dot com

Chris & Glen embark upon their first look back at Patrick McGoohan's 1967-8 British sci-fi series The Prisoner in many years and hope that the show's ethos — "militant and individualistic," in the expression of one of The Village's ever-changing Number Twos — will turn out to be something more generous than it seems. Also, will Number Six ever be nice to a woman?