Be Selling You

“The Enigma of It All”: The Prisoner from Cult to Commodity

In his essay “Defining Cult TV,” Matt Hills (2004) mentions The Prisoner alongside other examples like Star Trek (1966), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Xena Warrior Princess (1997), and Doctor Who (1963, 2005), placing the show in a rather broad category of television found in different historical moments and cultural contexts. In their introduction to the anthology Cult Television, Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta E. Pearson (2004, ix) also suggest that the definition of cult is quite broadly applicable, particularly when it comes to television texts. As Hill (2004, 512) notes, “In contrasting The Prisoner with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we are hardly likely to conclude that these shows are aesthetically or thematically similar given their very different production, media-institutional, and historical contexts.” Such attempts to define cult television are demonstrative of Jason Mittell’s (2004, xii) argument that “television genre is best understood as a process of categorization that is not found within media texts, but operat[ing] across the cultural realms of media industries, audiences, policy, critics, and historical contexts.” Cult television, then, is a slippery category that can mean a variety of different things to a variety of different people, in a variety of different contexts.

Hills’ (2004, 513) solution is to suggest an interlocking understanding of “cult-as-text, cult-as-inter-text, and cult-as-audience.” Although he gestures toward the importance of studying cult television as “institutionally located” and “part of broader patterns within changing TV industries” (Hills 2004, 522), I argue that what remains most consistent in how we understand cult as text, intertext, and audience is the significant industrial imprint on the production, distribution, and marketing of cult television. The qualities that are frequently associated with cult television—a voracious fan base, textual complexity and ambiguity, and the somewhat opaque notion of quality (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004; Hills 2002; Jancovich and Hunt 2004)—often position cult television as somehow more timeless and transcendent than other, more ephemeral and commercialized television products. Although a cult program’s economic value is more evident in the postnetwork era, where television audiences have become increasingly fragmented, it is important to remember that cult television, past and present, has developed out of the industrial logic of television production.

One of the defining qualities that sets cult television apart from film is the predominance of complex serialized narratives (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, xi). Serialization, a mode of textuality that “creates the demand it then feeds,” is a quality shared by the soap opera, a genre that has been more explicitly associated with the capitalist logic of television production (Hayward 1997, 3, 139–41). Hills describes serialization in cult television as an “endlessly deferred narrative” (2002, 134–35) in which the plot is propelled by a “defining enigma or puzzle” (2004, 513). However, he differentiates this mode of seriality from soap operas, which, “always continue to pose a number of questions, none of particular priority or significance” (Hills 2002, 134). This distinction suggests a textual difference that not only elevates the quality of cult narratives above those of the soap opera, but also effaces the shared, underlying industrial motivation in creating a text that is open-ended enough to draw and hold audiences’ attention.

The Prisoner presents a seemingly perfect case of this kind of serialized, cult textuality as the show is known for its puzzling narrative and open ending. However, cult television also develops over time, working not only with serialization but also with variation, to keep viewers engaged and to avoid lapsing into the mundane (Hills 2004, 513). The Prisoner defies this kind of expansive temporal development because of its short televised run. This is particularly relevant to the show’s life beyond its original broadcast in the United Kingdom. While British audiences saw the show’s run reduced once it was already on the air, when The Prisoner came to CBS as a summer replacement, American audiences were already aware that the series would end after seventeen episodes. ² Thus, the show’s final episode, “Fall Out,” which most clearly evokes the generic conventions of cult television texts that Hills (2002) describes, became an intriguing selling point leading up to the show’s broadcast in America. A 1968 TV Guide feature on The Prisoner prepared American viewers for the finale, noting that the show “brought screams of anguish and dismay when it was shown in England . . . from viewers and critics enraged at the enigma of it all” (Barthel 1968, 22). Another article warned, “When installment 17 ends, the audience is going to be left hanging by its thumbs” (Gowran 1968c, SLC6). One article even suggested that American producers must be envious of The Prisoner’s ability to keep viewers invested in the show months after it ended (Gowran 1968b).

Although there was some concern that the open-ended finale would alienate American viewers, its status as a summer replacement significantly lowered the stakes. When discussing The Prisoner’s hypothetical future at CBS, Senior Vice President of programming, Michael Dann, commented that the show would not work in the long term because American audiences would be frustrated with Number 6’s continual failure to escape “The Village,” musing, “no matter how brilliant the production, the public likes to identify with a winner” (Barthel 1968, 24). The Prisoner, at the end of its summer run, had served its purpose for CBS, keeping viewers engaged with the network’s programming. However, the same qualities that made the show a marketable cult oddity in the summer months proved to be deterrents to broadcasting episodes (or producing new episodes) during the regular season.

The marketability of The Prisoner as a cult text can also be understood through a consideration of context, something Hills (2004, 514–17) gestures toward in his discussion of intertexts. If, as Hills suggests, fanzines and niche publications enrich our understanding of cult television’s generic definition, then more mainstream discourses around these same shows demonstrate how such definitions of cult textuality are reshaped to reach out to a larger audience. The Prisoner has been characterized, in popular press discourses about the series, as an enigmatic cult text (Corry 1986; Gowran 1968a; Mifflin 1995; Shnay 1969). However, as Jeffery S. Miller (2000, 44) observes in Something Completely Different, when the program was broadcast in the United States, “the openness of meaning in The Prisoner . . . was immediately closed off . . . by publicity in the American press” who offered much more explanation of the narrative than was ever made available in the text itself. One significant way in which the text was clarified for American viewers was by drawing on another intertext, McGoohan’s previous role as secret agent John Drake, and by using this character as a framing device. Although no explicit connection was made to McGoohan’s Secret Agent character in the text of The Prisoner, many critics operated under the assumption that Number 6 and John Drake were one and the same (Miller 2000, 44). In Don’t Knock Yourself Out (2007), a documentary about the production of The Prisoner, film librarian Tony Sloman suggests that this connection was not a fabrication by the American press, citing Prisoner continuity sheets that referred to Number 6 as “Drake.” The production manager Bernie Williams further elaborates that this was never explored in the show due to issues of copyright and royalties. Whether or not they represent accurate readings of the text, such intertextual connections suggest that the show functioned industrially as something of a spin-off by drawing on a familiar character and popular actor to make it more marketable. In this way, the series was presold to Americans, based both on the appeal of Secret Agent and the allure of actor Patrick McGoohan, to whom much of The Prisoner’s realization is attributed. ³

The Prisoner’s export to American television also constitutes a kind of repurposing. This practice was not entirely new to The Prisoner’s producer Lew Grade, who had developed a strategy of producing shows in the United Kingdom that could also be sold to American networks (Carrazé and Oswald 1990, 204; Miller 2000, 25–27). His company, Associated TeleVision (ATV), was instrumental in producing The Prisoner as well as Secret Agent and The Saint (1962–69), two successful British spy series made for commercial television in the United Kingdom and sold in America by Grade’s Incorporated Television Company (ITC). Having already made a lucrative $1.25 million deal to sell Secret Agent to CBS in 1964, Grade’s Prisoner was part of a package of exports sold to American networks in 1966 that would generate between $7 and $10 million (Milner 1966). Thus, even at its conception, The Prisoner was meant to build on the success of Grade and McGoohan’s previous collaboration by “reinterpreting” Secret Agent as a cult program and repurposing it for sale outside of the United Kingdom.

Although it fostered a cultish following, The Prisoner also drew on the popularity of more mainstream British spy series and McGoohan’s star image in America (Miller 2000, 37–50). As Hills (2004, 517) notes, “cult TV is activated . . . both as a form of ‘anti-mainstream’ distinction where cult status is about finding quality in unexpected places and revaluing otherwise devalued/popular texts, and also as a brand of ‘mainstream’ consumerism.” This tension between the niche appeal of quality programming and the economic drive of mainstream consumerism is evident in intertexts around The Prisoner, which drew on Britishness as a signifier of quality and sophistication. Although quality television has been similarly defined by its elevation above “average” or mainstream programming, “the American concept of a ‘quality’ cultural artifact as being one somehow connected to Britain long predates the arrival of television” (Miller 2000, 20). Discourses about the American broadcast of The Prisoner incorporated both the “antimainstream distinction” of cult television and notions of quality and sophistication associated with British culture, securing a space for the show within the mainstream, while also situating it on the margins as a novel text that did not adhere to the conventions of American network television.

When journalists wrote about The Prisoner, they conflated its British identity with its cultish qualities, suggesting that such a puzzling, open-ended narrative could not be produced by the American television industry. One critic suggested, “According to reports [the series is] unlike anything offered before on television—that is, unlike anything offered before on American TV” (Gowran 1968a, W12). In fact, these qualities contributed not only to differentiate the British show from American fare but also functioned to promote and publicize the series leading up to its broadcast (Hills 2002, 134; Miller 2000, 47). “Such enigmas,” one journalist wrote, “would be all right in an American-made series, of course, because every answer would have been served up by the second chapter, and from then on things would have been ho-hum all the way” (Gowran 1968a, W12). When CBS Vice President Michael Dann hyped the show, he promised that it would be “the most talked about series ever” (Gowran 1967) and several articles highlighted its puzzling plot and McGoohan’s connection to the series (Gowran 1968a; Henninger 1968; Laurent 1968). In all these cases, invocations of both British quality and cult television narratives were used to sell The Prisoner as a novelty for American audiences.

In describing the audience connection to cult television, Hills (2004, 516–19) notes the importance of fan discourse as a way of “generically re-organizing TV programmes into the category of ‘cult’” through the formation of intertextual connections, the self-conscious evocation of the word ‘cult,’ and the organization of social formations around particular texts. After The Prisoner was broadcast in America, it did not take long for the series to be surrounded with a kind of cultish fascination. Many journalists continued to comment on how different it was from anything offered on American television, pondering the deeper meanings embedded in the show. An article published in the Chicago Tribune months after The Prisoner’s summer run claimed the paper was still receiving letters about the series and that ITC’s American offices were being flooded with “thousands of letters from puzzled citizens” (Gowran 1968b). Those who wanted to unravel the mysteries of the show had to rely on reruns and by the time the show was rebroadcast a year later, these eager viewers were already being referred to as “Prisoner cultists” (Shnay 1969). ⁴

The Prisoner cult grew over time and in 1977, the Prisoner Appreciation Society was formed in the United Kingdom and included approximately five-hundred members worldwide (Hanson 1977). This cult following and the general intrigue raised by the show was enough to keep it alive in syndication. In America, the show was repackaged in different contexts beyond simple reruns on CBS. Several of these instances demonstrate how cult television and audiences have been deployed in different, or even experimental, ways often on the cutting edge of new trends and technologies. Because such audiences are so small and devoted, programs like The Prisoner offer a unique, low-stakes opportunity for such experimentation.

The Prisoner’s first broadcast on public television in 1978 demonstrated an attempt by PBS to offer trendier programming that followed “the cultish pop-entertainment path discovered by the movies” and presented an opportunity to reach a new audience without completely compromising its emphasis on “quality” television (O’Connor 1978). ⁵ The Prisoner was also among the first complete television series to be released on VHS in 1984. This was partially attributed to its appeal to fans who would want to collect and rewatch the episodes in an attempt to unravel its mysterious plot (Stark 1985). Another experiment with niche audiences occurred in 1995 when the Sci-Fi channel, then two years old, integrated live chats into its broadcast of the series. Users were invited to watch the show and chat online while the comments were displayed in real time (with a standard seven-second delay) at the bottom of the screen (Mifflin 1995). Because this broadcast took place at 3:00 a.m., it was framed as an experiment; a way to test the waters for future efforts of this kind, which might appeal to the kind of niche fan and tech savvy audiences sought by the new cable channel. However, it is AMC’s revival of The Prisoner in 2009 that best demonstrates the value and utility of cult television to the contemporary television industry—in this case, as a way to solidify the network’s brand identity and attract new consumers and advertisers.

“Breakout Originals” and “Prison Breaks”: The Prisoner on AMC

As many scholars have noted, remaking is an economically motivated mode of production and a common trend in the film industry (Leich 2002; Verevis 2005). However, remakes are also part of a broader “regime of repetition,” which, as Derek Kompare (2005, 1) points out, has played an important role in shaping the television industry. While remakes suggest an attempt to recreate an approximation of the original text, terms like reinterpreting and rebooting suggest a kind of repetition with variation. Such productions, rather than threatening to efface the original text (Leich 2002, 39), offer something new, while ensuring that the original remains a salable commodity.

Todd Gitlin (2000, 63) describes the industrial motivation for such repetition with variation: “Executives,” he writes, “like to say they are constantly looking for something new, but their intuition tells them to hunt up prepackaged trends and then recognize the new as a variant of the old.” Cult texts like The Prisoner offer a preexisting audience of fans and thus seem like an ideal property to recycle and repeat. However, the passion and spending power of a niche audience does not necessarily ensure sufficient returns on such an investment. For such repetition to be profitable in the traditional sense, producers must expand the fan base and, ideally, draw a larger mainstream audience. However, by emphasizing advertising revenue and experimenting with corporate branding, AMC found additional ways to make The Prisoner (2009) a worthwhile venture, regardless of its reception.

Niche audiences such as cult fans are much more significant in the postnetwork era as they allow producers and advertisers to narrowcast, reaching “much more specific demographic and psychographic groups” (Lotz 2007, 180). In the case of AMC and The Prisoner, cult and cult audiences were as much the selling point as the target demographic and remaking the program allowed AMC to engage in practices that reinforced their industrial identity, which had been in flux since the network shifted to a more traditional, commercially driven format in 2002. Deborah L. Jaramillo (2012, 13) details the progression of AMC’s brand between 1984 and 2011, from a network focused on airing classic films without commercial interruption to the incorporation of ad-sponsored content, popular contemporary films, and original programming, suggesting that AMC has increasingly focused on “strong content” at the expense of producing a coherent brand identity. However, this precludes the possibility that the very strength and coherence of AMC’s brand is in housing the kind of quality, original content associated with premium cable on a basic cable network. For AMC, this has meant casting the kind of wide net of quality original programming that promises to bring in a variety of viewers, a practice that draws on a long-standing precedent set by HBO (Jaramillo 2012, 2–3; Smith 2011, 9–10).

Without a clear-cut generic hook, the constitution of AMC’s brand identity became somewhat contingent on convincing advertisers and cable operators that the network was a worthwhile investment (Smith 2011, 11). Cult television audiences are similarly invested in deploying notions of quality and distinction to elevate their tastes above the mainstream (Jancovich and Hunt 2004, 30–32). However, as Jancovich and Hunt (2004, 41) point out,

Cult TV fandom is not the product of an opposition to . . . the cultural industries . . . but the product of a series of economic and intellectual developments that have produced a series of niche television markets.

In the case of AMC’s Prisoner remake, associations between cult and quality television were exploited to produce and package just such a market, allowing the network to present itself to advertisers and cable operators as eclectic, with the ability to attract a range of different viewers.

AMC used The Prisoner’s cult status to create interest in its own revival well in advance of the November 15, 2009 broadcast. In January of 2009, AMC attempted to build on the quality and cult status of the original series by making all seventeen episodes available online and emphasizing the show’s status as a canonic text. In addition to the episodes, their website included photos, trivia, fan tributes, and a chart noting the show’s influences on popular culture with references ranging from comic books to film to television. ⁶ This affiliation with The Prisoner supported AMC’s branding as a source of high-quality, cutting edge, original programming as their website was also the only place where viewers could access the television classic online. Naturally, the website also promoted the new series with blogs, cast bios, and viral marketing in the form of a website for the show’s fictional corporation, “Summakor,” as well as a Wiki that promised to unlock the secrets of “The Village.” Not only did this site encourage viewers to watch the original, even though it was never actually broadcast on AMC, but it also located both versions of The Prisoner firmly within a lineage of cult television.

Despite AMC’s efforts to connect The Prisoner (2009) to a cult lineage, the series itself received lukewarm reviews and ratings. Critics described the show as frequently incoherent and even pretentious (Lowry 2009; Poniewozik 2009). Viewers, too, failed to turn out in droves; after the Sunday night premiere averaged 2.2 million viewers, less than a million watched the final episode that Tuesday (Blastr Staff 2009). Some critics even felt compelled to comment on AMC’s attempts to capitalize on the show’s cult status. A critic in the Los Angeles Times called the original “a cult classic so revered that remaking it would seem the very definition of imprudent” and cited AMC’s critically acclaimed original series, Mad Men (2007–present), calling The Prisoner remake “boring” by comparison (Lloyd 2009). Washington Post critic Tom Shales (2009, E03) also drew such a comparison claiming,

The Prisoner doesn’t seem likely to attract a cult audience as large or enthused as the one that dotes on Mad Men, but not for lack of trying on AMC’s part; the promotion for this miniseries has been merciless and overbearing, with a promotional “bug” planted in one corner or another of the AMC signal for the past several weeks. They may not offer particularly distinguished programming, but they’ll make you aware of it if they have to bash your brains out in the process.

Although Shales criticized the network’s pervasive promotion of the show, his comments also speak to the importance of marketing both for and by production executives. While the miniseries may have failed to capture a large audience, The Prisoner was significant to AMC in a myriad of other ways. Such programming does not always need to be profitable in and of itself, rather, it can serve as a “loss-leader” to advance the network’s brand image as a whole (Smith 2011). Whether or not The Prisoner was a critical or ratings success, the network was able to use discourses of quality and difference associated with the original British cult show to both identify and promote the AMC brand.

John Caldwell’s (2008, 234, 239) “industrial identity theory” suggests a consideration of the branding strategies television networks employ to distinguish themselves to consumers and advertisers in an increasingly saturated television market. Caldwell (2008, 246) highlights three significant ways in which this kind of branding occurs: the consistent use of logos and other on-screen components, signature shows, and “‘compatible’ reruns,” all of which are employed by AMC. Tom Shales’ quote points to the importance of on-screen logos or “bugs” in promoting The Prisoner, in particular. However, this strategy is used across the board in branding AMC, with the familiar logo and ads for future programming appearing at the base of the screen during broadcasts. Although Shales criticizes the practice, as Caldwell (2008, 246) points out, branding strategies like this one have become part of the “self-conscious form of promotional activity that has also altered the very look and sound of contemporary television.” Even more than on-screen logos, however, the placement of The Prisoner on AMC’s programming roster helped to further establish the network’s brand.

Although cult content has been used, in the postnetwork era, as a way to target niche audiences for networks like SyFy, which defines its programming generically, with The Prisoner, AMC deployed cult television as a signifier of quality (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, xii). The network was able to draw on The Prisoner’s long-standing reputation as a cult classic and by remaking the series as a coproduction with a British network, AMC, like CBS in the summer of 1968, also used British culture to distinguish and elevate their programming. However, much in the same way that AMC drew on the original show’s cult status to promote their version, discourses about The Prisoner’s Britishness looked to the 1967 production to establish an aura of quality, rather than as a model for how to execute such a remake. Ultimately, the AMC/ITV version of the show cast Jim Caviezel, an American actor, as Number 6, while Ian McKellen, a British actor most frequently recognizable in America for his role as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series and Magneto in X-Men, played Number 2. McKellen’s casting effectively drew on both his reputation as a respected British actor and his notoriety as the star of two top grossing genre films with strong fan followings. While signifiers of Britishness were incorporated through cast members like McKellen and others, nods to the original Prisoner were also included through the revival of the iconic “rovers” (large white balloons, which capture escaped Villagers), familiar images such as the map of the village and the penny-farthing bicycle, and the phrase “be seeing you.”

Although British broadcaster Sky One was originally a coproducer of the series, it was announced in 2007 that they had left the production to be replaced by ITV, The Prisoner’s original broadcaster in 1967. In an interview, the head of Sky One, Richard Woolfe, said of the remake:

It’s a very quintessentially British drama and there were too many creative differences trying to share it with an American partner. I didn’t want to be responsible for taking something that is quintessentially British and adapting it in a way that I didn’t feel was reflective of the way people would remember it and the way people would want it to be. (Wilkes 2009)

While the 2009 version was presented as a quality production due, in part, to its British connections, Woolfe’s comments suggest that AMC was much more invested in deploying superficial signifiers of quality associated with the original show’s cult status and British roots, than in reproducing those same characteristics in the new series.

In incorporating signifiers of British and cultish quality, while maintaining an American feel to the show, AMC employed strategies of what Caldwell (2008, 241) calls “creative depersonalization” to promote “the corporation as creator.” Interestingly, the coproduced remake was actually filmed by ITV. Much in the same way that Lew Grade produced The Prisoner and Secret Agent in the United Kingdom with the hopes of selling the show to American viewers, the AMC/ITV coproduction was produced abroad to sell to American audiences. British audiences, it would seem, were somewhat secondary, as The Prisoner (2009) did not air on ITV until the following year, in April 2010, after the AMC run had already been released on DVD.

Despite its British affiliations, in America, AMC branded its efforts as an “AMC Original,” putting the corporation’s authorial stamp on the show. While the original programming produced by AMC supplements their more substantial rotation of Hollywood films, AMC Originals have become an important part of building the network brand. The AMC slogan, “story matters here,” is indicative of how the channel has begun to integrate original programming with the majority of its content: repackaged Hollywood films. In 2009, The Prisoner joined other successful original programs such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad and though these shows are all generically different, all three fit within the scope of the network’s mission, an emphasis on high-quality programming (Smith 2011). President of AMC Charlie Collier, who previously served as head of ad sales for Court TV (Lafayette 2007), explained, “We want our brand, when we do originals, to be as high-end and high-quality as the films we’re airing. You can’t air The Godfather and then go into Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader. It won’t work” (Bianculli 2008). AMC’s remake of The Prisoner added one more layer to their brand, targeting cult fans, while also reinforcing their own identity as a channel concerned with quality storytelling, be it classic film or an original television series.

Describing this strategy, AMC executive Rob Sorcher said, “We’re seeking to bring a level of cinematic quality to the TV screen and bring our own take to some of the genres” (Schneider 2007, 2). While the latest iteration was not celebrated for its narrative, critics did acknowledge the high, cinematic quality of the miniseries, referencing its “striking visuals” and “creepily distinctive look” (Lowry 2009; Ryan 2009). One critic even hypothesized, “I suspect I would have appreciated it even more with the sound muted” (Wiser 2009). Even if The Prisoner did not draw critical acclaim, it still worked as a part of a larger strategy to push AMC’s brand identity by virtue of its high production values and cinematic aesthetics.

This focus on narrative and aesthetic quality, rather than particular genres, allows AMC to appeal to a variety of different viewers. While their audience numbers might not be consistent, such variation opens the door to opportunities for specialized advertising, which AMC presents to sponsors as something they call “branded storytelling” (Eisenhardt 2012). This strategy employs AMC’s “Audience Identity Metric” (AIM), a system developed by AMC with Nielson, and used to streamline bundles of programming geared toward particular audiences (AMC Networks 2008). The 2009 Prisoner premiere was scheduled to follow a daylong Matrix marathon, featuring all three films. This strategy was an attempt to reach out to science fiction and cult fans by connecting The Prisoner to The Matrix, though it is somewhat baffling that The Matrix aired rather than the original series, given that AMC had made episodes of The Prisoner available on their website for months leading up to the broadcast on November 15th.

AMC also used the show to circumvent time shifting technologies. Building on their DVR-busting “madvertising” strategy, which drew viewers in with thirty-second segments during Mad Men’s commercial breaks, AMC introduced “Prison Breaks” during the Prisoner premiere. At the break, a voice-over asked viewers to sit through a thirty-second ad for the 2010 Subaru Impreza to gain extra information about the show’s narrative. AMC President Charlie Collier emphasized the dual function of these spots: “Certainly we want our viewers to engage with our sponsor messages, but we’re also looking to lead them through to the payoff” (Crupi 2009, 5). Ultimately, it is unclear whether these “prison breaks” paid off for viewers or AMC. What is clear, however, is that AMC used The Prisoner as a testing ground for this kind of advertising, creating a more appealing environment for sponsors. By proposing advertising as a solution to unraveling the cult show’s puzzling plot, AMC sought to demonstrate their own potential as producers of quality programming and highlight the services they were capable of providing to their advertisers.

The challenge of maximizing the appeal and revenue of cult texts is explicitly present in the discourse around the AMC series; however, the industrial logic of repetition to profit on and maximize The Prisoner’s cult status can be traced as far back as McGoohan’s press conference at Borehamwood studios. Although the fact that the series was revived after forty years seems to prove the power of fans’ dedication to a single show, this case is most important as evidence of how cult television is continually deployed, through repetition and variation, in ways that benefit the television industry. The Prisoner’s 1968 export to America and its revival on AMC in 2009 demonstrate that these attempts to introduce the program to a new audience were industrially motivated and orchestrated to find additional ways to profit on an otherwise small-scale and short-lived cult text.

At Comic-Con 2009, AMC carved out an impressive space for itself by hyping the new Prisoner miniseries. Large white balloons, replicas of the iconic “rovers” of the original series, could be seen on the streets of San Diego, and “seek the six,” a reference to the show’s main character, Number Six, was spelled out in the sky. Equally impressive was the very distinctive booth set up in Comic-Con’s exhibit hall. The word “obey” appeared over an image of two massive eyes, belonging to Ian McKellen, which seemed to watch over the enormous hall. The booth itself was an interactive exhibit where men wearing the white-trimmed, black blazers from the original series invited attendees to join “The Village” by giving their name, e-mail address, and posing for a headshot. In return, attendees were given official “village identification cards” and could win a Palm Pre by announcing their identification number on Twitter. For fans, or even casual viewers of the original series, this promotion seems like a perverse callback to Number Six’s individualist protest, “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!” and “I am not a number! I am a free man!” Indeed, The Prisoner was highly critical of precisely the kind of surveillance and information collection that AMC used as a promotional device in 2009.

It seems difficult to imagine that such a crass marketing strategy would be used, even for a reinvention of the cult series. However, this fundamental disjunction between text and promotion suggests that AMC may have been more heavily invested in marketing possibilities than in the realization of the show itself. For this reason, it is worth looking back to the small press conference staged by Patrick McGoohan and his fellow producers. While there is a marked difference in scale, both the Comic-Con preview and the 1967 press conference were publicity events that drew on cult qualities to promote iterations of the show.

Both versions of The Prisoner demonstrate the potential for a promotional life beyond broadcasting. In the case of the original series, its cult status propelled it as an export to American television and through forty years of reruns and repurposing. AMC’s reinterpretation of the series, however, was only a six-episode miniseries but became part of a larger branding strategy to sell the network to consumers and advertisers. As these incarnations of The Prisoner demonstrate, cult television’s distinction as unusual or exceptional content can also serve to distract from or even efface the industry’s interest in ensuring that it always remains, at its core, a commodity.