>>3529 (OP)
I am fucking slow, was gonna make this thread 2 years ago
>The Prisoner
Vast majority of the hype back in the day and references are from the famous series Secret Agent Man, aka Danger Man, which starred the same protag doing what the title would suggest, despite using a lot of James Bond material as a reference the irony is that the 007 film series ripped tons of ideas from SAM.
Now, as far as i remember the trivia story is one day the actor didn't want to renew because his demands were not met and was seemingly unceremoniously laid off/forced to resign, so later some previous writers and he did a seemingly unrelated series called The Prisoner based on previous ideas and which ended up starring the man as a former secret agent, having the same code number which replaced his name, reflecting about the very similar experiences and being played around by the organization either previous employer or the enemy's, or were they the same? in a Fantasy Island setting turned crazy which interestingly enough is supposedly very similar to a place he raided in the series
As you might expect this was a fucking phenomenon and a quite explicit showdown against his former character/series, doesn't help it was released at the height of the psychedelic era and the episodes were released out of chronology. Very influential and a landmark in television although modern reviews and viewings don't seem to do it justice because they often completely ignore the fact you had to see 3 or 4 seasons of SAM to experience all the context and shock about it.
It's basically a sequel series about a hero, except this series is "the bad ending", or like seeing James Bond's Die Another Day except the entire movie is the intro and the subsequent part of Bond being tortured in the North Korean prison and never getting out, or if The Sopranos had another season with Tony getting canned and being raped/tortured in prison for 14 episodes... although there's the idea that the showrunner did play with the idea because several episodes before the ending can be interpreted as purgatory with the character having a surreal introspection/visitation.
It also inspired an ambitious action movie years later which became famous for being a train wreck in production due to retarded executive meddling, it's still talked due to the hamfisted shenanigans in it but it's one of my favorite movies due to the high and eccentric production values regarding the photography and cinematography aspects of it, which nobody talks about because people are plebs.