The age old question of where do spies go when they quit their jobs was finally answered in The Prisoner, a 1960s British show about a secret agent who finds his world--and his reality--turned upside down when he resigns from the Her Majesty's service. Patrick McGoohan, star of another spy series called Secret Agent (a.k.a. Danger Man), created The Prisoner as a high-concept spy thriller that supplied plenty of surrealism and psychedelia, in addition to the spy genre action. The resulting series was a unique study of identity, social conformity, power, authority and individual freedom.

The opening credits of almost every episode feature McGoohan's unnamed spy storming into the offices of his superiors and quitting his post. In his hurry to rush home and pack, the spy doesn't notice that he's been followed until he's knocked out by a mysterious white gas that is piped through his apartment's keyhole. When he wakes up, he's in the Village, a curious little community populated by others like him: people who knew too much to be left unsupervised. The spy is assigned a number--No. 6--and told to go about his business because he will be staying at the Village for the rest of his life. No. 6 doesn't take the news sitting down but every one of his escape attempts ends in failure. The Village is under constant surveillance, some of the prisoners are actually guards and if anyone gets too far away from the little town, a huge white balloon tracks them down and smothers them into submission. Rover, as the balloon is called, stops at nothing to retrieve escaped prisoners.

No. 6 endures all manner of psychological and mental torture but he refuses to break and provide his captors with "information," which they repeatedly ask of him. In between escape attempts, No. 6 tries to discover the identity of No.1, the Village's head honcho, who might have all the answers. The visible hierarchy in the Village only goes as high as No. 2 and that person becomes No. 6's main adversary. There is a new No. 2 in almost every episode, constantly putting up barriers to No. 6's quest for the truth.

The Village itself was a  marvel of visual insanity, bursting with cheery innocuousness that made it all the more sinister when the viewer discovered it was a prison. Bright, primary colors, quaint shops and gardens, prisoners strolling in the sunshine dressed in seaside resort outfits and being acutely polite to each other. It was like a theme park gone horrifyingly cute.

McGoohan originally wanted to make The Prisoner a seven episode series but producers were pushing for a more profitable 27 episode run. The parties eventually compromised and McGoohan sketched out 17 episodes, even though he has since gone on record to disavow the "extra" episodes as irrelevant. Fans didn't really care; they were mesmerized by the Village and No. 6's struggles with authority. The final episode was so eagerly awaited that when it finally aired in all its incomprehensible glory (did No. 6 escape? who was No. 1?), audiences stormed the network's offices. Literally.