Spy media as commentary on society: Callan, The Equalizer, Danger Man, The Prisoner
Callan, The Equalizer, Danger Man, The Prisoner #
Spy media is a fantastic genre because for large parts of its history it was based on people’s lived reality – their fears and worries about society. People: not just spies. It began as a genre in World War One, with the growing awarenessthat the Germans were constantly trying to discover details that would give them a strategic advantage, then again in run up to World War Two and during World War Two. Then after the world war, the Cold War, was something that everybody actually experienced.
The paranoia of the Cold War wasn’t exclusive to the authorities and this continued when we got into the era of anti-terrorism espionage. The problem was the same: the fears that people experienced were real, they were part of our culture, and that’s what spy media is about. It’s not about the reality of what’s taking place inside the actual government espionage institutions. As a genre it’s about people’s fears for society. Often that fear was twofold.
Firstly, the fear of the enemy, but also the fear of what sacrificing yourself, your ethics, your ideology, to fight the enemy would do to you. How it would change you.
That dual fear was probably best expressed by two of the more interesting fictional British spies to come out of the 1960s.
No, not Smiley or James Bond.
Edward Woodward’s Callan and Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man, who are notable for the fact that they they both were extremely competent executions of the spy genre playbook.
They had the full set of tropes: the betrayal, the leaks, and the sort of “what are we doing to ourselves”, “what have we become” mentality that was a staple of the genre
Danger Man was probably the better executed of the two and not just because of how good Patrick McGoohan is in it. He is extremely convincing as a spy who’s able to turn himself into whatever figure or character that the other person trusts. He’s incredibly convincing as the perfect infiltrator, but he’s also convincing as a person who is really good at it but isn’t a sociopath – isn’t comfortable with any of of what’s happening.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Patrick McGoohan’s along with some of the people involved in Danger Man – their immediate follow-up to it was The Prisoner.
Both Danger Man and Callan began in black and white but did a final few episodes in color and, similar to Danger Man, Callan is extremely well executed and largely carried by the excellent acting by the lead Edward Woodward. The Callan character was clearly one of the models for Edward Woodward’s later character in The Equalizer.
These two series are fascinating because their follow-ups were similarly well thought-out in terms of understanding spy media – the execution of the tropes, of the structure, of the power dynamics, and how it portrayed the power dynamics, but in both cases, The Equalizer and The Prisoner, they were primarily there to use the spy tropes to comment on society on the nature of our relationship with the coercive thing that is community.
The Equalizer is, admittedly, more interesting as a concept rather than for the in the actual execution, being a bit of an 80s series that is uneven. It’s theme, though, is quite possibly the biggest promise that a series failed to deliver. Because you’re expecting so much greater things when you hear the original Equalizer intro music.
But the radical part of Equalizer is in the concept, which is that justice isn’t being served by society. It is reserved exclusively for the powerful and the wealthy. But the spy – spies have literally a license to operate outside of the societal of this of society’s rules, because the idea is that these situations are so dangerous, they cannot be limited by the normal rules. This is carried on in later spy media such as Jack Ryan series, or the absolutely god-awful 24, and the classic James Bond. But in The Equalizer, the concept is that the spy is directly serving the downtrodden and the people who are deemed unworthy of justice in society.
The person from outside society can help them get the justice they deserve, and this is remarkably similar to the sort of… for the idea behind the later series Leverage (and Burn Notice), but in Leverage it’s the criminals who stand outside of law who are delivering justice, because sometimes the law protects the unjust, but Equalizer never managed to deliver to the same degree that Leverage does.
More interesting than the dynamic between Callan and The Equalizer, the series that becomes just remarkable, and if you haven’t watched it, you very much should: The Prisoner.
You need to be aware of the context of The Prisoner in that it took place during the peak of the cold war, during the time when people were expected to both conform to society and not betray any hint of what would deviate from proper society, because that would be, well, signs of Communism.
But people were also surrounded by a paranoia, the sort of fear of the other, of the alien, and what Prisoner accomplishes, is that it presents pretty much the same spy figure as is the lead in Danger Man but he’s here as a stand-in for the non-conformist – for somebody who refuses to follow the rules and the presets of society around him. And it’s all wrapped up using the structure and framework of 1960 spy media, like the early James Bond movies.
And it’s using that both visual and narrative metaphor of colourful, science-fiction adjacent espionage to portray a surrealistic story that makes the whole experience of being different palpable. It makes you feel, almost physically, the risks and depression – the stress – that comes from not being what society wants you to be. And refuses to give you a a nice closure ending, because it – this is one of those things that doesn’t actually have a neat conclusion that can be tied up in a bow.
That’s why the remake and every follow-up completely missed the point of what The Prisoner is about.
The Prisoner series is about using the structure of spy media to deliver an experience that makes you understand what it – both makes you understand what it feels like to stand outside of society and be a target of its desire for oppressive conformity.
If you are one of those people who doesn’t fit in and doesn’t – doesn’t follow the seemingly arbitrary rules of society – it makes makes you aware that you’re not alone.
It dramatizes the experience to such a degree that you know that this is a human experience. It’s part of the human condition.