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If you didn't see The Outer Limits at the time, then watching them now is an odd experience. It lacks quite the quirky charm of the Twilight Zone, but it still capable of taking you by surprise with unexpected flashes of imagination. A lot of it is embarrassing, or just plain boring, though none of it is ever as bad as the worst science fiction B movies of that time, and certainly the strong casts reliably outperform the limp scripts. I won't comment particularly on the several very strongly favourable comments here. I think they are all tinged with a wash of nostalgia. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's actually very interesting to see, but it's unlikely to persuade anyone coming to this episode for the first time in the twenty first century. I still revere The Prisoner, but I wouldn't dream of recommending it to a new audience now.But what makes this episode in particular stand out, and be worthy of a special recommendation, especially to British viewers, is the quite astonishing portrayal of what seems to be a Yorkshire, or possibly, Welsh mining village. It is as though the opening chapters of Sons & Lovers (D.H.Lawrence) had been re-imagined in the world of The Darling Buds of May (H.E.Bates). What would that mean for an American reader? What about On The Waterfront re-imagined with the characters and setting of Tobacco Road? It is that grotesque.There is no sign of a pit, and the village is more or less a rural idyll, but there are random roving working class types, extremely grimy, and ever ready to subject any available maiden to a bit of sexual harassment (hey-nonny-no) while knocking off the odd traditional shanty on the button concertina. It defies all rational analysis, and has to be seen to be believed.And the voice of the young woman (Constance Cavendish) behind the counter in the village shop must surely be a candidate for one of the most bizarre screen accents of all time, in which Welsh, Gestapo, Asian and robotic elements are perpetually at war with each other. I recently laughed at an American survey of Dick van Dyke's career which said that though his "Cockney accent in Mary Poppins was notoriously bad, nevertheless he remained popular in the UK". No, no, no; there's no nevertheless to it. It's because his Cockney accent was so bad that we all love him. We British are a bit strange like that; we admire incompetence in all its forms. But by these standards, Constance Cavendish should have been an international megastar. Whatever became of her? Unmissable.
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