The Prisoner!

Columbo is on top form in it.

just went through this series again since first watching it about fifteen years ago. it's so good, but how did i forget how much full bore insanity makes up the last episode???? my goodness, it goes on for about twenty straight minutes of nonsense for a while there.

by the way, you can find the whole series on youtube (in sometimes *ahem* "vintage" quality, but alas it's there). also, this is a cool interview. he seemed like a really intense person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95DrM4tfyD0

Watched it front to back properly for the first time this year. Amazing period piece on several levels, and the sheer brilliance of turning a weather balloon into a horrific threat solely through sound and editing is next level.

I did similar, the blu ray box has a few documentaries, the best one with Patrick McGoohans um involvement. It’s brilliant.

Yeah, it’s called “in my mind” it’s available separately and well worth seeing.

anybody tried rewatching it in one of the "alternate" episode orders?

Never tried it but some of the episodes are obviously (and annoyingly) in the wrong place

in my preparation to rewatch in one of the alternate orders, i found that the entire thing is on shout factory in hd: https://www.shoutfactorytv.com/series/the-prisoner

This is a fun early lockdown-era interview with Steven Moffat about The Prisoner

https://www.tvcream.co.uk/podcasts/tv-cream-stays-indoors/tv-cream-stays-indoors-with-steven-moffat/

It’s particularly enjoyable for his valiant (although I think completely wrong!) takedown of the finale

oh man, this show. my Dad ordered the VHS tapes when I was 12 and we watched them together. we never really bonded over a TV show before. tbh I was still in that phase where I took entertainment a bit too seriously and was a bit miffed at all the "this doesn't really make sense to us either" moments.

fun story the company I work for won a big "Best Place to Work" award and there was some local TV station doing a feature on us. at one point during the day they were interviewing random employees and I got the "why do you think this company has such a low turnover rate?" question. I answered "well if anyone quits they find themselves followed by a giant white balloon on their drive home and as soon as they get out of the car they blackout and wake up under their desk". they wound up not airing that response :(

The 'Free For All' podcast is worth checking out, and yes, it is two guys theorizing and repurposing what they've researched but they're interesting and speak like normal humans.

There is an interview with Derrin Nesbitt coming up which could be good and the format suggests that they're going to stop after having done all 17 episodes.