| MANY HAPPY RETURNS
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First UK showing: Friday the 10th November 1967 at 19:30 on ATV Midlands |
 
No. 6 wakes to find the village entirely deserted. Seizing the opportunity, he builds a raft which he loads with food and drink and takes photographs of various parts of the village to prove its existence. Once at sea, he navigates with a hand-made compass and keeps a diary of his journey. However, the journey takes longer than he expected and, still at sea and lost, he slips into unconsciousness.
The prisoner's raft is spotted by a boat and the sailors steal his supplies before throwing him  overboard. Revived by the water, No.6 manages to get on the boat and stow away. After some rest he discovers the boat belongs to gun-runners and, after a fight, dives overboard. Finally reaching land, he obtains food and directions from some gypsies, stows away in the back of a lorry and eventually ends up in London where he makes his way to his old home. He discovers it has a new tenant, a Mrs. Butterworth, who also now drives his Lotus Seven.She befriends him, giving him food and clothes and even lends him the Lotus, encouraging him to come back and adding that she might even bake him a cake for his birthday which happens to be on the following day. No. 6 drives to his old HQ and reveals the existence of the village. His superiors are sceptical as he could now be a double agent. However, they eventually agree to help him find out where the village could be. According to his account of the journey, the place would seem to be located somewhere west of Morocco, Southwest of Portugal and Spain. 
No.6 is allowed to conduct an air search and eventually spots the Village far below. He gesticulates to the pilot to fly in for a closer look and, as the plane flies lower, the pilot is revealed as an agent of the Village as he mutters, "Be seeing you!" and ejects No.6 from his seat. Parachuting down into the still deserted village he reaches his cottage, just as the place comes back to life as if nothing had happened. In a cruel twist Mrs. Butterworth enters, holding a birthday cake in her hands, wearing the No. 2 badge and greeting him with, "Many happy returns!" |
Trivia: Only five episodes were filmed at Portmeirion - Arrival, Free For All, Dance Of The Dead and Checkmate - being done more or less together. Many Happy Returns was produced seperately and at a different time of the year judging by the de-foliated trees.  Georgina Cookson, who plays Mrs Butterworth, also appeared in "A, B & C" as "Blonde Lady" - an unrelated minor character. Similarly, Patrick Cargill, later to play a sadistic Number Two in "Hammer Into Anvil", appears as "Thorpe".When No 6 emerges from the sea after escaping from the gunrunners, he apparently climbs up the shore cliffs and, as he gets to the top we can see a lightouse over his shoulder and far below. This is the lighthouse at Beachy Head near Brighton on the South coast of England and was also used in the later episode "The Girl Who Was Death" where it was blown up. When he gets back to London, he takes a route back to his former home, for which the frontage of Number 1, Buckingham Place was used. This house also appears during the opening title sequence of most episodes and in the final moments of "Fall Out". An interesting cameo appearance occurs when No. 6 returns to his old HQ and confronts the "man behind the desk" who we see  in most episodes during the opening credits. This is George markstein, story editor and writer on the series up to episode thirteen and arguably co-creator of the concept behind The Prisoner series.This is the first episode to break the convention of showing the identity of the current Number Two during the opening titles - necessary in this case of course due to the "twist in the tail" nature of the story. Not only is Number Two's face not revealed, the usual voice-over is done by an unrelated actor. This same voice-over is re-used in no fewer than eight episodes, whether the identity of Number Two needs to be masked or not. The owner of the voice is never credited but it belongs to actor Robert Rietty who did a lot of work like this, where over-dubbing was necessary but the original actor was unavailable (or too expensive) to do the job themselves. He also did a lot of TV commercials and voice-only jobs such as the spine-tingling, "This is the voice of the Mys-terons-s-s." in 'Captain Scarlet'. He and Patrick McGoohan did most of the odd voices and minor character voice dubs in The Prisoner between them. McGoohan especially relished doing "funny" voices (eg) the odd bald man in the Therapy Zone wearing The Prisoner's black suit. 
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| A full review of this episode with production notes can be found in Six Of One's magazine "Free For All" issue seven published Summer 2003. |
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