Prison Episode / Live-Action TV

Prison Episodes in Live-Action TV

• Much of the beginning of Season 2 of 24 has Jack in prison to break out a drug kingpin as part of a larger plan.
• In Arrested Development, the first season has George, Sr. in prison. However, as part of an "illusion", his son GOB goes to prison for an episode to prove he can escape in 24 hours time. He escapes when an inmate shivs him and he's taken to a hospital.
  • Later, Tobias spends some time in prison to research the role of Frightened Inmate #2.
• Arrow: Much of "Broken Arrow" is set inside Iron Heights and focuses on Roy's attempts to survive in prison after he confesses to being the Arrow.
• The episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon receives a red light camera ticket in Penny's car in a previous episode and fights it in court. During the proceedings, he commits contempt of court - or rather utter contempt of the judge - and is sent to jail until he apologizes. Although Sheldon Cooper out-weirds hardened criminals to the point where "you're in my spot" makes a tough con give up his seat to the psycho, the thing that makes him crack and make a grovelling apology is when he realizes the awful truth about the bathroom facilities...
• Bonanza:
  • The 1971 episode "Kingdom of Fear" is set at a prison camp and is based on Cool Hand Luke.
  • The 1972 episode "Riot!" meant to address sub-human living conditions prevalent in the era — and to a point, even in the early 1970s, when this episode was aired ... and to a point, even today. The episode introduces Tim Matheson to viewers as the long-running series' last major new character: Griff King, who is paroled to the Cartwright's custody; Denver Pyle, who became known later as Jesse Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard, plays the uncaring, cold-hearted prison warden.
• The Brokenwood Mysteries: A prisoner's murder sees a couple of culprits from previous episodes make a return as having lived in the same wing as the victim. Complicating matters is that Brokenwood Women's is a Private Profit Prison that cuts corners to save a buck, meaning that its security cameras are just for show and the cell doors are easily unlocked by the prisoners themselves.
• Burn Notice:
  • Fiona spends a chunk of season six trying to survive in prison, while Michael works to get her out.
  • Michael also voluntarily goes to prison for an episode to help protect an old buddy of Sam's.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • "Maximum Security": Detective Amy Santiago spends the episode infiltrating a prison in Texas, trying to get vital information from a prisoner. Her boyfriend Jake Peralta is her handler and he's really scared she's gonna get hurt.
  • "Coral Palms, Part 2": Captain Holt and Detective Peralta spend a part of the episode in a small town jail in Florida. The local sheriff doesn't buy their explanation that they're in Witness Protection.
  • "The Big House, Part 1" & "The Big House, Part 2": Season 4 ended with a Wham Line: two detectives from the 99th precinct, framed for a series of bank robberies, are sentenced to 15 years. The opener of season 5 sees them imprisoned and having a hard time.
• The Charmed season 8 episode Run, Piper, Run has Piper thrown into jail in someone else's stead. Sort of, she had accidentally magically glamoured into fugitive murder suspect, Maya Holmes, hence the mistake. Except Maya was actually innocent and framed all along, so the Charmed Ones set out to clear her name and save her from the real murderer before Piper changes her glamour.
  • In previous episodes throughout the series, Prue (twice), Paige, Phoebe and Piper (together), and Chris were at some point locked up in muggle jails due to magical shenanigans. A recurring plot was them having to break out to fight the Demon of the week, only to then swiftly return behind bars just in time to have their names cleared once the magical crisis was over.
• In Covert Affairs Annie is taken to a high security prison in Russia.
• In the CSI: NY episode "Redemptio", Hawkes goes to a prison to witness the execution of a death row inmate who murdered his sister. Just as it is about to take place, a guard is killed. This is revealed to be a plot by Shane Casey, who is using the murder as a distraction to escape using Danny's stolen badge. In the process, the prison cells are unlocked, resulting in a Prison Riot.
• Decoy has "Deadly Corridor," in which Casey goes undercover in the minimum security wing of a women's prison to solve the murder of an inmate who was stabbed fourteen times with a sharpened spoon.
• Doctor Who:
  • A significant portion of "The Mind of Evil" takes place in Stangmoor prison, loosely based on the real life HMP Manchester/Strangeways.
  • The Doctor spends several episodes of "Frontier in Space" incarcerated in a lunar Prison Colony.
  • "Heaven Sent" doubles as this and a Torture Chamber Episode, as the Doctor is trapped in a mysterious clockwork castle by unidentified enemies. It turns out that he's inside his own confession dial.
• Due South: Ray gets sent to prison for being in contempt of court. In order to watch Ray's back as well as protect an important witness in Ray's case, Fraser intentionally commits a crime and gets sent to prison himself; but he's so straitlaced that the cop who's arresting him as a favor has to be the one who puts the single candy bar in his pocket.
• The Dukes of Hazzard: Although it was always Boss Hogg's goal to send Bo and Luke Duke to prison, and most episodes did involve the Duke boys tricking Rosco into letting them escape from jail, only one episode — the terrifying "Cool Hands, Luke and Bo", a brilliant adaptation of Cool Hand Luke — was actually set at a prison, and a prison camp at that.
• The Ellen episode "Three Strikes" revolves around her being arrested for participating in an animal rights protest and ultimately remanded to the custody of her parents.
• And on Everybody Loves Raymond, there is the episode where Debra Barone is arrested and incarcerated for drunk driving. Seeing her in the lock-up makes her brother-in-law, Lieutenant Robert Barone, do a very big double-take.
• Farscape's Rashomon episode "The Ugly Truth" features most of the crew on a disc like prison-thing.
• In The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode "Mistaken Identity" both Will and Carton are arrested due to racial profiling. In "There's the Rub" Will and Phil are mistakenly jailed for solicitation.
• Father Brown: In "The Wayward Girls", Bunty reunites with Father Brown to uncover a dark secret at the local girls' borstal.
• The Goodies: "Goodies in the Nick" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The Goodies spend several years in prison after committing a series of crimes for a police sergeant to solve so he can gain a promotion.
• Hannibal: Season 1's finale ends with Will Graham incarcerated, framed by Hannibal Lecter as the Copycat Killer. The first half of season 2 follows up with him trying to expose Hannibal and prove his own innocence.
• Hawaii Five-0 has an episode in which Chin is kidnapped and wakes up in prison, where the Dirty Cop that Chin got incarcerated wants to have some fun with him before killing him. Unable to trust the guards, Chin resorts to starting a fire in the hope that he can communicate with the rescue workers. The fire triggers a prison riot that Chin must survive long enough for Five-0 to rescue him.
• Hawaii Five-O meanwhile had three:
  • "The Box," from the first season, where McGarrett visits Oahu State Prison, only to be held hostage during a prison riot by Big Chicken, whom he put in prison earlier in the season, in the episode "...And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin"
  • "The Double Wall," from the third season, where a prisoner, who claims he's innocent of the murder charge that sent him to prison, holds a prison doctor hostage to force McGarrett into re-opening his case.
  • "The Case Against McGarrett" from season eight, finds McGarrett held hostage in prison, this time put on trial by Honore Vashon (Harold Gould) for the murder of Vashon's son Chris Making this a Sequel Episode as well (to season five's "V For Vashon" trilogy - Chris Vashon is killed at the end of Part 1, "V For Vashon: The Son").
• Henry Danger had the episode "Christmas Danger" which is surprisingly, a Christmas Episode only in name, but a prison episode in plot.
• In House, the title character is sent to prison after his actions during the season 7 finale. The first episode of season 8 sees him on the verge of being granted parole. The following episodes go on to inconsistently reference his status as a conditionally released prisoner (he is forced to wear an ankle-mounted GPS, which viewers are sometimes reminded of).
• JAG had "The Prisoner" in its first season in which Harm was held by the Chinese.
• Jake and the Fatman: In "Danny Boy", McCabe's bottled-up feelings are unleashed when he's called to the state prison where his inmate son witnessed a murder.
• On Leverage, the season 3 pilot features this after Nate is voluntarily sent to prison to protect the rest of the team. Notable in that it avoids a dark feel due to the team staging an escape in typical Leverage fashion.
• Longstreet: In "The Shape of Nightmares", a young widow asks Mike to look into the apparent suicide of her husband, who died in prison. Mike enters the prison to investigate, and discovers evidence that he was actually murdered. A convict that Mike had sent to jail is now the "Head of the Yard," running the other inmates like a mob-boss from inside the prison walls, intent on getting revenge on Longstreet. Mike must use all his wits to solve the murder and stay alive.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Episode 4 has Galadriel and Halbrand spend most of the episode in a Numenorian jail, her for sedition and him for a Bar Brawl. While in imprisonment, they get to know each other much better.
• MacGyver (1985):
  • In "The Escape", mac infiltrates a prison in French North Africa in order to break out an unjustly imprisoned missionary.
  • In "Jack in the Box", Jack Dalton is sent to a prison farm by a Small-Town Tyrant who is using the prisoners as a workforce for his mine. Mac ends up in the same prison when he goes looking for Jack.
• MacGyver (2016): In the episode Can Opener, Mac has to infiltrate a maximum-security prison and break out a drug kingpin so he can find his cartel's secret location. All goes well until partway through the breakout, when Mac blows his cover preventing the kingpin from killing a guard.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil (2015) has "Seven Minutes in Heaven" in season 2, which has great focus on Wilson Fisk's time in prison, and Fisk manipulating Frank Castle into disposing of Dutton, the current prison "kingpin". Season 3 gives us "Blindsided," where Matt goes to the prison to gather information on Fisk, only to walk into a trap Fisk has engineered just for him on the off-chance he came by.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): In the second season, Jessica's mother Alisa is turned in for being the superpowered serial killer killing people from IGH's sketchy past. Two episodes are spent that focus on her time in prison, until she breaks out with the intention of going after Trish after Trish indirectly gets Alisa's doctor/lover Karl Malus killed.
  • Luke Cage (2016) has "Step into the Arena", told mostly in flashbacks, documenting Luke Cage's time as an inmate at Seagate Penitentiary up to the experimentation that gave him his durable skin.
• Midnight Caller has "Life Without Possibility," in which Jack persuades rioting prisoners to release the security guards they've captured and take him as a hostage instead. Unfortunately, Jack is a former cop who arrested some of the rioters in the first place. One of the prisoners beats him up and almost gouges out his eye before another prisoner stops him.
• Murder, She Wrote had "Jessica Behind Bars". While it's set in a jail, Jessica is only there because of a writing program that involves a former student.

• The first half of the third season of My Name Is Earl follows Earl as he serves time for confessing to a crime committed by his ex-wife, Joy.
• NCIS: McGee gets tangled up in a women's prison riot in "Caged." The plot revolves on him trying to resolve the conflict and the other characters trying to get him out alive. Notably, he is significantly more badass afterwards.
• On NCIS: Los Angeles, Sam Hanna spends an episode in prison...undercover as "Hakeem Fayed" as part of a plan to infiltrate a terrorist cell. It helps that his friend Nate Getz is also undercover as a prison psychologist, allowing the two of them to fine-tune their plan.
• The New Adventures of Robin Hood: In "The Prison", Sheriff Bickerton invites Robin and Marion to tour his high-security Penishaw prison. Robin declines, but Marion decides to go. But the prison has been taken over by the inmates, and Marion and Bickerton are captured by them. Robin learns what has happened and comes to help. He finds out that Maddox, the leader of the revolt, has vials of a deadly plague, which he threatens to use to contaminate London's water supply, unless some of his men are released by the regional high lord, the Duke of Vortigern. Robin realizes that the only way to prevent catastrophe is to break into the prison and destroy the plague vials. His best chance of getting into the escape-proof facility is with the help of Billy, the only person to ever escape from it. Billy is a beautiful but tough woman, now incarcerated in Vortigern's castle.
• Our Miss Brooks:
  • In "Bobbsey Twins in Stir", first Mrs. Davis, then Miss Brooks, Mr. Boynton, Mr. Conklin and school board head Mr. Stone get sent to jail for unknowingly selling forged tickets to the policeman's ball.
  • In the radio episode "Student Government Day", Miss Brooks, Mr. Boynton, and the student-government spend the day locked in jail.
• The Partridge Family has "Go Directly to Jail," in which the family performs at a prison, where one of the inmates to trick them into spending the night so he can sell them some songs he wrote. Turns out he plagiarized them from another prisoner. The real writer is willing to let them use his songs as long as he's credited under a fake name.
• Person of Interest has a several-episode arc in which Reese is held in prison on suspicion of being The Man In The Suit.
• The episode “Solitary Confinement” of Psi Factor is set in prison. In order to investigate the death of a man who died in solitary confinement, Peter Axon goes under cover as an inmate.
• Red Dwarf's eighth series was an extended prison episode.
• Reservation Dogs: Though it's technically only a government-mandated group home, Cheese gets locked away when Uncle Charley is arrested for growing pot. His release is contingent on finding a new guardian.
• Seinfeld is the rare example where the Prison Episode is the Grand Finale.
• Sesame Street: The special Little Children, Big Challenge: Incarceration has a Muppet kid named Alex who has a father in jail. Older characters explain what incarceration is, saying when somebody violates the law (a grownup rule), they have to go to jail or prison.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • "The Chute" has Tom and Harry sent to an orbiting prison after being falsely accused of terrorism.
  • "Repentance" is an interesting case in that Voyager itself is turned into a prison for several death-row inmates.
• The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Canamar" is a variation; the episode is named for a notorious prison, yet Archer and Trip spend the whole time on a prison transport that never actually makes it there.
• Supernatural has "Folsom Prison Blues" which features Dean and Sam deliberately getting themselves arrested so that they can solve a case inside a prison.
• Victorious had a one-hour special where the gang visits a country named Yerba, and eventually, one missing eye and dead octopus later, everyone gets sent to prison. Andre and Beck have rocks thrown at them, Jade is nearly beat up by another prisoner, and Robbie is put on the girl's side. They manage to escape thanks to their teacher, though.
• Walker, Texas Ranger has several, with either the Rangers or Alex posing as inmates to expose corruption:
  • "Break In," from Season 4, had Walker and Trivette posing as an inmate and guard, respectively, to gather evidence on an inmate who ordered the deaths of a witness (on whose testimony he was convicted) and two Rangers, but run into complications when the convict and prison administration are found to be in cahoots.
  • "Texas vs. Cahill", near the end of Season 5, has Alex unjustly held on murdering an ex-boyfriend, who is defending a crime boss from her prosecution, until Walker, Trivette and her father, Gordon, manage to prove that that crime boss framed her. While held in jail, Alex has to deal with inmates whom she previously prosecuted, until she is saved by an inmate held on trumped-up charges.
  • "Mr. Justice," from the sixth season, has Walker and the Rangers fighting the bureaucracy of a state senator who is opposed to opening a boot camp for young offenders, as a "second chance" and alternative to prison. Much of the action, aside from the senator's efforts to derail Walker's efforts, shows the offenders being helped to turn their lives around.
  • Season 8's "Fight or Die" also counts as a Pro Wrestling Episode, which details Walker, Gage and Trivette posing as hardened inmates (former two) and a guard (Trivette) trying to bring down an underground prize-fighting ring, where the warden and a corrupt promoter are forcing inmates to fight for their lives in mixed martial arts-type matches.
• In the Without a Trace episode "Penitence", the Victim of the Week is a convict who may have escaped or met with foil play within the prison.
• Xena: Warrior Princess had "Locked Up and Tied Down" where she went to prison for killing a girl long ago except the girl became the prison's warden.