The Prisoner

"Where am I?"
"In the Village."
"What do you want?"
"Information."
"Whose side are you on?"
"That would be telling.... We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"
"You won't get it."
"By hook or by crook, we will."
"Who are you?"
"The new Number Two."
"Who is Number One?"
"You are Number Six."
"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

Thus begins "The Prisoner", an English television series of epic proportions I finished watching today. It stars Patrick McGoohan, who is well and truly a Dude.

Number Six, as he is known for the duration of the series, is an important government spy who unexpectedly resigns. Before he can escape to go into hiding he is abducted and wakes up in a gorgeous but isolated settlement known only as "The Village". It is a 1984 type dictatorship where everyone is constantly and secretly monitored, tricked and experimented upon. His captors want to know only one thing, and then they will release him: why did he resign?

But Number Six will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. In each episode a cunning plan is deployed to try to get Number Six to reveal the information, but he will never fall for it. He plans not only to escape, but to do so having revealed nothing, and to go back and destroy the Village afterwards.

It also features some giant, bouncing, screaming white balloons as the "police force", who subdue rebels by suffocating them in their terrifying latexiness. Fans of Muse might be interested to know this is exactly where the inspiration for the giant Hullabaloo balloons comes from.