By Jonathan Morris

Note: Although shown as episode two, evidence suggests this is in fact episode five.

Not only are there several different ways in which to watch The Prisoner, to further confuse matters there are different versions of episodes of The Prisoner. There's an alternative version of Arrival, which contains additional arriving, and there's an expanded The Chimes Of Big Ben which has different title music, extra Chimes and a ten per-cent Bigger Ben.

So for this episode I didn't watch the broadcast version of the episode, I watched a ropey, washed-out copy. However, this is the version that was aired originally.

It's predictable but fun. Once again the kooky stripey-jumpered Sixties chick with whom Number 6 is doing the flirty turns out to be an agent for Them - no surprises there - but the method she uses to entice him to say why he resigned is amusingly tortuous. She makes him think that he has escaped from The Village and been sent to London in a packing crate, which is then opened in an office in London, where he meets his bosses who ask him why he resigned.

However Number 6 sees through this scheme because the eponymous Chimes of Big Ben chime out the wrong hour for the time zone. It's just a tape recording and the office is in fact a replica built... in The Village!

What is also important about this episode is that the new Number 2, played by Rumpole McKern, takes a few minutes to

EXPLAIN THE PREMISE OF THE PROGRAMME

Apparently The Village is where all the spies go to be interrogated, and is, in Rumpole's view, a model for a future version of the whole world. Which makes a kind of sense. Number 6 wanted to go on holiday, and instead found himself stuck for what seens like a lifetime in a rather unconvincing model village. Story of my childhood.

Rumpole is otherwise rather bothersome, doing that 'I don't have a clue what I'm saying or why I'm saying it' business of laughing heartily after every line. He covers well, but I still haven't forgiven him for filching Ringo Starr's ring (I said 'filching', those of you with unclean minds).

This episode contains a wonderful twist. We spend the first half an hour of the episode watching Number 6 building a strange, boat-shaped sculpture. What can this strange, boat-shaped sculpture be, we wonder? What inscrutable, wily method of escape is Number 6 planning this week, and what part will this strange, boat-shaped sculpture have to play?

Only when he takes his strange, boat-shaped sculpture down to the beach do we realize. Of course! It was in front of our eyes! He's been building a boat!

And yet he's not suspicious that his boat-shaped sculpture hasn't aroused any suspicions. That's suspicious. He should be suspicious, because whilst suspicion at suspicious behavior is not very suspicions, a lack of suspicious at suspicious behavior is very suspicious indeed.

Or is that just what they wanted him to think? Does Number 6 think that they are merely pretending to be suspiciously unsuspicious of his suspicious behavior, and are, in fact, not suspicious at all? However, that would be suspicious too. Pretending not to be suspicious when you are is probably the most suspicious thing you can do.

I don't think this should be watched as episode 5. It should be episode 2. It may be set after some other episodes, because it's apparent that Number 6 has already been in the village for several months by this point - and knows all about the non-alcoholic gin which he learns about in 'Free For All' - but I think, maybe, The Prisoner is not supposed to be watched linearly. It's non-linear, like Pulp Fiction or that Tom Cruise film with the frogs.

It's amazing how fascinating shows can become through incompetent script-editing.