The Throwback Tuesday weekly post is a opportunity for me to revisit the good, cheesy, forgotten or essential parts of music, film, tv and books from my childhood, the past few years or the generations/eras/works of art that have influenced my life in some way.
This week, I’m going to talk about one of my all time favourite TV shows, Prison Break. The series started and was first aired back in 2005 and ran for four series finishing in 2009. In the UK, the first two seasons were shown on Channel 5 ridiculously late at night before Sky One bought the rights to the show for the last 2 series. The show starred the likes of Wentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell and Wade Williams among many more.
The basic premise is Miller’s character, Michael Schofield, gets himself sentenced to prison in order to break his brother out. His brother Lincoln his been sentenced to death after being accused and found guilty of murdering the Vice President’s brother but he has been set up and unwilling to watch his brother die for something he didn’t do, Michael commits robbery and is sentenced to five years in the same prison as Lincoln. The twist is that Michael is a structural engineer and the firm he works for, years before, had designed the very prison they are in so Michael studies them and gets them tattooed on his body as a map to escape. With many twists, turns, backstabbing and violence of prisons in America, the first season is fast paced and sees a band of men against all odds work together to escape Fox River State Penitentiary.
Season 2 follows the escape of series 1 and follows each individual member of the group and what happens to them. There is deaths, captures, court cases and the brothers along with a few others make it to Panama before Michael and 3 others from the group end up in prison yet again. For season 3, we see the roles reversed on the brothers, Michael is locked up while Lincoln has been cleared and is a free man on the outside. The season then takes a turn as The Company, a sort of mafia style group, want Michael to break one of their pals out of prison, following the tales inside the lawless prison and captured relatives and love interests outside, it sets itself up for a big finale and a readymade storyline in season 4. After Michael’s love interest is killed in season 3, he sets out for revenge in season 4 after his second prison escape. It also sees a big and slightly complicated storyline that involves The Company and government agents and secrets being revealed.
Personally, my favourite series out of them all in the first. It loses it’s way a little bit storyline wise after that but they are definitely worth a watch as they are very good TV. I sometimes think that Prison Break is a little bit underrated as I’ve not met many people that have actually watched the show and it is one I will always recommend to people looking for something a little different from all the other usual TV series that are doing the rounds at the minute.
If you’ve not seen Prison Break then I definitely recommend you give it a go and you can watch the trailer for the 1st series below:
Mixtape Couture 