| "Many Happy Returns" | |||
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| The Prisoner episode | |||
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 7 |
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| Directed by | Patrick McGoohan using pseudonym Joseph Serf[1] | ||
| Written by | Anthony Skene[1] | ||
| Original air date | 10 November 1967 | ||
| Guest stars | |||
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The Colonel (aka "James") - Donald Sinden |
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| List of The Prisoner episodes | |||
Many Happy Returns is the seventh episode of the television series The Prisoner.
Contents |
In this episode, Number Six awakes to find The Village deserted. Momentarily abandoning his misgivings that the eerily quiet place gives him, he takes a number of pictures before assembling a raft and making his bid for freedom. After spending weeks at sea, he makes it back to London, where a Mrs. Butterworth now occupies his old house and drives his Lotus 7. Mrs. Butterworth is intrigued by Number Six's plight, feeds him, and lends him clothes and her car so that he can make contact with his former employer. They are sceptical of his story, but ultimately allow him to demonstrate to them the location of the village. He leads a plane to the Village only to realize the plane is being piloted by a village confederate. Number Six is ejected from the plane and is greeted in the Village by Number Two, who happens to be Mrs. Butterworth. She offers him many happy returns of the day; his taste of freedom was nothing more than a carefully controlled birthday gift.
This episode is unusual in that the entire first act, showing Number Six escaping from the Village and making his way to London, features no dialogue.
The airfield used in this episode is the former RAF Chalgrove / Chalgrove Airfield in Oxfordshire, now privately owned by Martin Baker.
Although Number Two in this episode is female, the opening credits sequence features the unidentified, "generic" (male) Number Two, voiced by Robert Rietti that appears in several other episodes. This was presumably to keep Mrs. Butterworth's actual identity a surprise, for both Number Six and the viewer.
The Number Two in this episode is the only one in the entire series to wear a "negative" style identity badge. Usually the badges worn by Number Two have a white background with a black penny-farthing bicycle design on them; Mrs. Butterworth's is reversed.
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