Inside the Prisoner: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s [Paperback]

Ian Rakoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1999

The fully illustrated inside account of the making and significance of the ultimate cult television show.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ina Rakoff is a film editor and screenwriter. He gained a co-story credit for "Living in Harmony," perhaps the single most memorable episode.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: B T Batsford Ltd (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713484136
• ISBN-13: 978-0713484137
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,437,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Economising with the truth, February 19, 2001

By 

Karl (England, Great Britain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Prisoner: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s (Paperback)

The disparity between the contents of this book and its title 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 regards 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 entirely 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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A must for fans, but not a great book, July 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside the Prisoner: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s (Paperback)

Rakoff, an assistant editor on the show, does his best to describe what it was like to work with McGoohan, Markstein, Tomblin, et al., but he only worked on a few episodes, and really saw only a sliver of the total picture. Too much of the book focuses on the rest of Rakoff's career as a writer and filmmaker, which is marginally interesting, but not Prisoner-related.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth your time, December 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside the Prisoner: Radical Television and Film in the 1960s (Paperback)

A very deceptive title. Ian Rakoff worked on only a few episodes and his accounts are limited to a few encounters with McGoohan and trivial gossip around the show. The book should've been titled "Ian Rakoff: A bunch of stuff I did that had nothing to do with the Prisoner." Maybe 25% of the book is about working on the show, the rest is about his career before and after which makes for poor reading. I didn't even finish it because after the sections about the Prisoner it completely lost my interest. Anything worthwhile about the Prisoner has been written about in other books. Avoid dissapointment.