This new box set 40th Anniversary edition of The Pensioner (as I fondly call The Prisoner) looks pretty good on the picture quality front when I spun the opening episode - quickly disengaging the dodgy 5.1 Audio to the option of 2.0.
From the opening Network logo where they have cheekily replaced the letter 'o' with an animated weather balloon (representing the ominous Rover man-catching device from the series), I felt glad and heartened to have parted with money for what is now my fourth different companies' set of this series - forever upgrading to better picture quality is my aim.
I think the show is great, and most episodes stand the test of time without being too wacky (like I am finding The Avengers for being too 'out there', for example). Patrick McGoohan's performance is one of the main reasons for the success of the show, and it feels like he is the real deal in most situations he is placed by his alleged captors, whilst turning the tables on them through quick wit and occasionally base fisticuffs.
The recent Man From UNCLE 5 film UK box set re-introduced me to mid 60s US Spy shows, and I have watched Mission Imossible as it is being stripped in daily on UK Channel Five US. Yet, by comparison, The Prisoner seems so much better for being crisp and shorter, and actually completed as the story ends by the last episode. The fact that it was not limited to being franchised by US Network requirements into multiple series, or at least won the battle to not be that kind of show, makes it superior. The recent qualms by the audience as to whether there will be an actual end to LOST made the producers of HEROES actually make sure season one came to a conclusion, and I am glad that ALIAS at least wrapped things up before going off the the Air (although ALIAS went on for a couple of seasons too long when the stories became a little too ludicrous even for me!). The madness of the last few Prisoner episodes is the perfect way to leave the show - I hope many people will enjoy it now.

I hope the transfers are better than the U.S. A&E disks, which looked pretty crummy: gatefloat, artifacting, artificial sharpening. Not sure if these ever got upgraded State-side.

We're all familiar with Amazon's "Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available" option. In the Blu-Ray catagory I find movies that have been announced (DR NO), reasonable assumptions (JURASSIC PARK), high hopes (THE EXORCIST) and most intriguing, THE PRISONER. Will 1080 lines actually benefit a 60's BBC production? They will notify me when it becomes available.

One that was shot on 35mm? Sure.

The real question is whether the physical production was designed to *withstand* that sort of scrutiny. I hear amusing things about the amount of pancake make-up on Kirk & the gang on "Star Trek" in HD...

It wasn't a BBC production. If it had been, it would have been in black-and-white, and the only copies we'd now have - if, indeed, any survived at all - would be telerecordings!

It should look great on Blu-ray... as good as any movie of the era.

Are the alternate versions of both ARRIVAL and CHIMES OF BIG BEN included?

Full details can be found here.

The transfers between the Network set and the R1 A&E set are like day and night. Literally.
The extras are also very good - they do port over the trailers and "Prisoner Companion" from the R1 set, but in addition, there are commentaries on 6 of the episodes, the documentary "Don't Knock Yourself Out", galleries and artwork, and the title sequences, with Grainer's theme, Wilfred Joseph's rejected theme (heard on the alternate 'Chimes of Big Ben') AND Robert Farnon's rejected theme.

Worth a double dip, if you're a Villager.

Can't help but asking - is there captioning or English subtitles? I didn't see that listed anywhere in the information about the set on the link.

Network don't subtitle their discs.

Well, nuts. Gives me a good reason to keep the A&E discs, then. Amazing that they can put money into upgrading the image, getting commentaries ... but can't fork over the cost of subtitles or captioning (and, let me just add, that I mean this as a general complaint for a lot of companies and not just meaning to take it out on Network).

Back when A&E were first putting together their Prisoner DVDs, I by chance ran into someone working on them and made the suggestion of getting closed-captioning on the discs because "no one else putting out the episodes has bothered to do it" and it'll bound to help sales with the deaf and HOH, or those who have problems with the occasional accents." Glad I had a hand in helping them out there with a feature that helped me just as well.

But getting back to the Network boxset - it sounds great! (No pun intended.)