Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Subscribe to Criterion: youtube.com/channel/UCAP57cF-FSjJKzzXg7ntPlQ?sub_confirmation=1
Watch all 17 episodes of the landmark 1960s television series THE PRISONER on the Criterion Channel: criterionchannel.com/the-prisoner-1
This is the first in Criterion’s new YouTube-exclusive series of five introductions to THE PRISONER by Alex Cox, writer, director, and author of *_I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding_ The Prisoner* (2017). Check back weekly for new episodes! youtube.com/playlist?list=PLda8rHecQSyM
Head to the Criterion Channel to enjoy four films by Alex Cox–including REPO MAN (1984) and WALKER (1987)–playing for a limited time: criterionchannel.com/directed-by-alex-cox
Order *_I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding_ The Prisoner* here: kamerabooks.co.uk/bookpage.php?isbn=9780857301758
*About _The Prisoner_*
Long before TWIN PEAKS beamed prime-time surrealism into the American living room, there was THE PRISONER, the 1960s British cult sensation that pushed television into new realms of unsettling, Kafkaesque mystery.
Series creator Patrick McGoohan stars as a nameless spy who, after he abruptly resigns from his highly classified job, is kidnapped and held in a strange, deceptively idyllic town known only as the Village, where his quest for freedom collides with the sinister machinations of a mysterious authoritarian sect determined to keep him under their control. With its prescient exploration of free will in the age of surveillance, this pop-culture touchstone remains one of the most discussed and endlessly analyzed series in television history.
Subscribe to Criterion: youtube.com/channel/UCAP57cF-FSjJKzzXg7ntPlQ?sub_confirmation=1
Watch all 17 episodes of the landmark 1960s television series THE PRISONER on the Criterion Channel: criterionchannel.com/the-prisoner-1
This is the first in Criterion’s new YouTube-exclusive series of five introductions to THE PRISONER by Alex Cox, writer, director, and author of *_I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding_ The Prisoner* (2017). Check back weekly for new episodes! youtube.com/playlist?list=PLda8rHecQSyM
Head to the Criterion Channel to enjoy four films by Alex Cox–including REPO MAN (1984) and WALKER (1987)–playing for a limited time: criterionchannel.com/directed-by-alex-cox
Order *_I Am (Not) a Number: Decoding_ The Prisoner* here: kamerabooks.co.uk/bookpage.php?isbn=9780857301758
*About _The Prisoner_*
Long before TWIN PEAKS beamed prime-time surrealism into the American living room, there was THE PRISONER, the 1960s British cult sensation that pushed television into new realms of unsettling, Kafkaesque mystery.
Series creator Patrick McGoohan stars as a nameless spy who, after he abruptly resigns from his highly classified job, is kidnapped and held in a strange, deceptively idyllic town known only as the Village, where his quest for freedom collides with the sinister machinations of a mysterious authoritarian sect determined to keep him under their control. With its prescient exploration of free will in the age of surveillance, this pop-culture touchstone remains one of the most discussed and endlessly analyzed series in television history.
