Can anybody say if this was better and that a fan of TP whom expects more from the writing and plotting, would enjoy it? - justinboggan
My experience is similar to yours in that I was familiar with
The Prisoner long before I checked out any
Danger Man. Where I differ is that I like the half-hour format although the one-hour format, what was called
Secret Agent when aired in the US, is "better" in the sense that the stories have room to grow and be subtle while the characters, including John Drake, can be more complex.
So, to answer your question: Yes, it does get "better" if what you are looking for is the kind of intricacy and machination inherent in
The Prisoner. In fact, one of the early one-hour episodes, "Colony Three," is practically a forerunner to
The Prisoner in terms of premise and feel.
However, if you know nothing about
Danger Man (and I'll use that to describe both the half-hour and one-hour versions) other than that one episode you describe, please be aware that
Danger Man is a conventional spy series. I think it is the greatest of the 1960s spy series that I've seen so far (and that includes
The Avengers,
The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and
Mission: Impossible, among others), but it does
not have the social and philosophical exploration of
The Prisoner. That is what makes
The Prisoner sui generis in my estimation--there
is no other series like it. So, if you are expecting
Danger Man to be similar to
The Prisoner in that respect, you will be disappointed because DM is a gritty, realistic look at spycraft--think John Le Carre and his
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
I too got into DM because I was "in the mood for more McGoohan," but from what I'd learned before I watched DM I knew it wasn't going to be another
Prisoner. Instead, I got hooked on it because it was so different from
The Prisoner.
The DM "pilot" is generally considered to be "A View from the Villa," which finds John Drake going to Italy to track down missing millions taken from a murdered American banker--and is notable in that exterior filming was done in Portmeirion, Wales, which is where
The Prisoner was later filmed. It is a decent start; a number of the subsequent half-hour episodes were better, but all did have the time limitation working against them, so I'd suggest trying a few of the one-hour episodes before giving up on DM/SA.
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"We hear very little, and we understand even less." - Refugee in Casablanca
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