Colonel Rodriguez

It's sad that this 64-year-old episode's plot is so timely today: an American journalist arrested on a trumped-up charge of espionage in a country ruled by a dictator, with John Drake (not Anthony Blinken) dispatched there to rescue him. Even sadder is that the contrived screenplay is strictly preposterous.

McGoohan is so smug and self-assured that I couldn't root for him this time. Instead the title military chief of police character played by Noel Willman quite skillfully, is the standout performance -not for the first time a suave, distinctive villain is more interesting than our 1-dimensional hero.

Yes, the way McGoohan glides through danger here is silly, as if he didn't get the joke when he was rehearsing his sides. Of course, he is Danger Man personified, but even Bond or say, Willis's John McClane can work up a sweat or seem perplexed during their inevitably heroic derring-do. The reverse-engineered screenplay makes everything look easy, way too easy, as Pat not only outwits Willman at every turn but never worries that something might go wrong.

Also, England had produced the terrific (one of my favorites) "Sapphire" by Basil Dearden (and scriptwriter Janet Green) a year before that dealt seriously with race relations, yet here we have Black actress from the Caribbean, Pearl Prescod, relegated to a menial role as co-star Honor Blackman's maid, about as up to date as such casting in a Mae West movie 25 years earlier.

Colonel Rodriguez arrests an American journalist on trumped up charges of espionage. Why? Because such a scapegoat will distract the people from how bad they have it in this dictatorship. When the journalist's wife thinks she has evidence that could incriminate the Colonel, it's up to Drake to make sure the right people get this information--which won't be very easy, as the Colonel is a tricky guy. So, it's up to Drake to be even trickier! Additionally, what is this information and who has it? This was a decent episode but it helps that it ended well. It also helped that Rodriguez was a pretty nasty villain. Not among the very best episodes of the series but overall well worth your time.