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The Shawshank Redemption

Frequently described as one of the best movies ever made, Frank Darabont’s 1994 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella is about as good as prison movies get. It follows Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who’s locked up for the murder of his wife.

Mark says he was originally immune to its charms, but has come to appreciate it over time, now viewing it as “about the imprisonment of the human spirit… You take from it what you bring to it, and people have clearly brought everything to it.”

Cool Hand Luke

Quite possibly the best prison movie of all time, Stuart Rosenberg’s Oscar-winning 1967 film stars the tremendously charismatic Paul Newman as an inmate in a Florida prison who absolutely refuses to be ground down by the system, no matter how tough it gets.

It sets a tone imitated by many prison movies that followed, with a mood that combines both cold, brutal cruelty and a kind of gallows humour that the men use to get them through life inside.

Orange Is the New Black. Credit: JoJo Whilden/Netflix

Orange Is the New Black

Dr Kalima Young, a film professor at Towson University, says one of the great things about prison as a setting is that “it’s a contained space, where characters can only move in so many different ways. Prisons are generally multi-ethnic, multi-racial. Folks are coming from multiple perspectives.” Prisons bring together people who might never meet outside.

That’s really seen in Orange Is the New Black, the groundbreaking Netflix series that ran from 2013 to 2019. It begins as the story of Harper (Taylor Schilling), a middle-class woman imprisoned for drug smuggling, but expands to tell the stories of women from many backgrounds. It’s also one of very few shows to focus on women in prison. “It’s the only one I can think of outside Prisoner Cell Block H,” says Young, referencing the similarly groundbreaking 1970s Australian soap opera set in a women’s prison.

Brawl In Cell Block 99

If you’re not a fan of gore and violence, maybe skip the work of S Craig Zahler. If, like Ellen, you love the “bone-crunching, ultraviolence” of prison movies, then 2017’s Brawl In Cell Block 99 is for you. It follows a drug mule (Vince Vaughn), who has to get into a maximum-security facility to kill an inmate, or a drug dealer will murder his wife and unborn child.

A lot of prison movies are used as ways to comment on larger society, but Zahler says that’s not his intent. “If something is conceived to deliver a message, it starts making more of ‘These are the good guys; these are the bad’,” he says, “rather than having a lot of grey [area] where you can pick it apart.” This film is all in the grey area.

The Birdman of Alcatraz

Burt Lancaster plays Robert Stroud, a real-life convicted murderer sentenced to life in solitary confinement, in John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Oscar-nominee. After finding an injured bird, Stroud develops a love for all birds and a new respect for life.

Ronnie Barker as Fletcher in Porridge.

“Birdman of Alcatraz is an absolute masterclass,” says S Craig Zahler. “It’s a good example of someone building a world within a world. [Stroud] is accepting the reset button that’s been pushed on his life. This is someone who belongs in prison, but that doesn’t mean his mind’s shut off.” The film plays fast and loose with the real Stroud’s life, but when did Hollywood ever let truth get in the way of a great story?

Porridge

Prison may seem an odd place to set a sitcom. In fact, Porridge expert Richard Weight says the producers originally worried it wouldn’t work. They needn’t have been concerned.

The classic 1970s 麻豆社 show, starring Ronnie Barker as Fletcher, was an instant classic.

“If you look at cinema, you’ve got Cool Hand Luke, Escape From Alcatraz – these are all about people desperately, understandably, wanting to escape,” says Weight. “Fletcher’s advice is to focus on the little victories.”

Porridge is a brilliantly observed comedy about “beating the system from within”, says Weight. It’s about trying to enjoy life without freedom.

Watch the classic comedy Porridge on 麻豆社 iPlayer now.

Scum

Scum started life as a play, made for TV in 1977, but its account of life in juvenile detention was so hard-hitting it was withdrawn from broadcast. In 1979, director Alan Clarke turned it into a movie, which has become a cult classic.

Sean Bean and Stephen Graham in Time.

Starring Ray Winstone, it’s one of the grittier portraits of prison life. Not in the heightened Brawl In Cell Block 99 way. This feels real, showing incarceration as an almost unendurable hell.

Winstone is now grateful the play was pulled and a new, more hard-hitting version created. As he told Mark: “If they hadn’t banned it, I might not be doing what I’m doing today.”

Time

Winner of two Baftas, this anthology series follows people as they begin their prison sentences. The first series in 2021 focuses on Mark (Sean Bean), who struggles with a new life of violence and intimidation, and a prison officer (Stephen Graham) who’s faced with an impossible choice.

Mark calls it “one of the most powerful dramas I’ve seen in the last few years.” Director S Craig Zahler says it’s “claustrophobic and unflinching” and praises Jimmy McGovern’s writing. “He refrains from any of the easy answers or easy ways out.”

Watch the two series of the award-winning Time on 麻豆社 iPlayer.

To hear more about these onscreen depictions of life behind bars, listen to the episode in full on 麻豆社 Sounds.