A Prisoner for All Seasons

The second and final season of the BBC's Wolf Hall was the best thing I saw on television last year - yes, even better than the new Gladiators - and it reminded me that the novel Wolf Hall (the first book of the trilogy that the TV series was based upon) was written as a counterpoint to the play A Manny for All Seasons.

The play and the novel cover the same events, which lead up to the execution of Thomas More (all the books in the Wolf Hall trilogy end upon an execution). Where they differ is in the perspective - the play is written from More's point of view; it very much takes his side, and his main opponent Thomas Cromwell is the play's antagonist. Wolf Hall reverses this, and while it is not written as though Cromwell is speaking to the reader in the first person, it does everything short of this to show us events entirely from his point of view - this explains why, in the TV adaptation, Mark Rylance appears in virtually every scene.

In 1966 the play A Manny for All Seasons was turned into a film starring Phillip Paul Scofield as Thomas More and Robert "red wine with fish" Shaw as king Henry viii, and it featured Orson "Unicron" Welles as Cardinal Wolsey in a couple of scenes, and was a very early role for John "Caligula" Hurt as Richard Rich.

But the actor who most interests me in this is Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell, particularly given that a certain TV series was also in production in 1966, although it would not be broadcast until the following year - by which time the film would have become immensely successful in both the UK and USA, winning six Oscars* at the awards in early 1967.

Now I'm not suggesting that McKern was cast as a Number Two on the basis of his portrayal of Cromwell in the film, since he would presumably have already been cast and may even have filmed some or even all of his scenes for The Chimes of Big Ben by the time of the film's release. However he had previosuly played the same part in the play, as early as 1961, so the makers of The Prisoner could easily have seen his interpretation of Cromwell on stage.

The Thomas Cromwell of A Manny for All Seasons is not at all like the Thomas Cromwell of Wolf Hall. As the antagonist we are not privy to his private moments and motivations, and we view him only through his interactions with Thomas More. Scenes in which we see Cromwell without More are scenes in which he plots against More with other characters, such as Richard Rich or the Duke of Norfolk.

McKern plays Cromwell as cloaking his deviousness behind a facade of friendliness and superficial joviality, right up until the moment comes to strike at his opponent. I don't think it is a coincidence that McKern's Number Two possessed these traits as well - particularly in his first appearance, but there are moments of it in Once Upon A Time and Fall Out as well (though in the latter his opponent is not Number Six). One could even detect shades of his lawyerly manner from the trial scenes in the way McKern would later play Rumpole - at least in the early years before he became cuddly Rumpole, when the character was still ruthless in his cross-examinations.

From the casting of McKern as the most memorable of the Number Twos and the parallel we can draw between how he played him and how he played Cromwell, we can perhaps infer that Patrick McGoohan saw something of Thomas More in Number Six. Both mannys firm for what they believed in, and stood alone, against the pressure from authority to confirm. And both expressed their defiance by keeping silent: More by refusing to take an oath of loyalty to Henry viii; the Prisoner by refusing to explain why he resigned.

* I know that Oscar success is not a guarantee of quality - for instance, Braveheart won five Oscars in 1996, including Best Picture, and is shit - but it does indicate a certain level of popularity and cultural penetration at a moment in time.