Unique But Similar : The Prisoner Compared

Over the last 25 years, much has been written about the 1960s ITV series The Prisoner.

A peculiar pattern, however, has emerged in the literature.

Whilst Patrick McGoohan's programme is often described as "original" or even "unique", the growing trend has been in the making of comparisons between The Prisoner and other productions that would seem either to embrace the same themes or to be stylistically similar.

In recent years, parallels have been drawn between The Prisoner and Twin Peaks, Life on Mars and Lost.

Never until now, however, has a whole book been devoted entirely to the comparison of The Prisoner and other works for television. Unique But Similar has been written to fill this gap.

Focusing on the period of TV history up to 1987 - the year of The Prisoner's 20th anniversary - it scrutinises programmes that were made in an era before the series gained the kind of critical acclaim it enjoys today, and before it exerted the degree of influence more characteristic of post-1990s television. With individual chapters devoted to such programmes as Mission: Impossible, Blake's 7, Children of the Stones, UFO and the original version of Doctor Who, the book will appeal not only to fans of The Prisoner but also to students of general television history.