Behind Bars: The World's Toughest Prisons

The First 48

The First 48 follows detectives from around the country during these first critical hours as they race against time to find the suspect. Gritty and fast-paced, it takes viewers behind the scenes of real-life investigations with unprecedented access to crime scenes, autopsies, forensic processing, and interrogations.

Hill Street Blues

A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.

Carl Weber's The Family Business

Meet the Duncans, a prominent family from Jamaica, Queens. By day, they’re an upstanding family; by night, they live a dangerous secret life.

The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents

The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1985 to 1986, and on the USA Network from 1987 to 1989. The series is an updated re-imagining of the classic 1955 series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The Endgame

A high-stakes thriller about Elena Federova, a very recently captured international arms dealer and brilliant criminal mastermind who even in captivity orchestrates a number of coordinated bank heists, and Val Turner, the principled, relentless and socially outcast FBI agent who will stop at nothing to foil her ambitious plan.

Jack Irish

Jack Irish is a man getting his life back together again. A former criminal lawyer whose world imploded, he now spends his days as a part-time investigator, debt collector, apprentice cabinet maker, punter and sometime lover – the complete man really. An expert in finding those who don’t want to be found – dead or alive, Jack helps out his mates while avoiding the past. That is until the past finds him.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

A television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock featuring dramas, thrillers, and mysteries.

Agatha Christie's Marple

The adventures of Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster living in the quiet little village of St Mary Mead. During her many visits to friends and relatives in other villages, Miss Marple often stumbles upon mysterious murders which she helps solve. Although the police are sometimes reluctant to accept Miss Marple's help, her reputation and unparalleled powers of observation eventually win them over.

The Tower

A veteran beat cop and teenage girl fall to their deaths from a tower block in south-east London, leaving a five-year-old boy and rookie police officer Lizzie Griffiths on the roof, only for them to go missing. Detective Sergeant Sarah Collins is drafted in to investigate, working to find Lizzie before she comes to serious harm, but also to uncover the truth behind the grisly tower block deaths.

Barnaby Jones

Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. The show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement. William Conrad guest starred as Frank Cannon of Cannon on the first episode of Barnaby Jones, "Requiem for a Son" and the two series had a two-part crossover episode in 1975, "The Deadly Conspiracy".

Walker

Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there's harder work to be done at home.

Burden of Truth

A big city lawyer returns to her hometown to take the case of a group of girls suffering from a mysterious illness.

Baretta

Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title role.

Smother

On the rugged coast of County Clare, Val Ahern's husband is found dead at the foot of a cliff the morning after a family party. The matriarch starts to dig into the family's secrets to find out who might be responsible.

London Kills

With a documentary style delivery, this drama tells the story of a team of top murder detectives with each episode featuring a different murder while also following a serialized story involving the lead detective’s missing wife.

All Rise

A look at the personal and professional lives of the judges, lawyers, clerks, bailiffs and cops who work at an L.A. County courthouse.

T. J. Hooker

Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Hooker is a tough-as-nails veteran police officer with the LCPD who turns his back on a gold badge and goes back to patrolling the streets and training recruits. Along with his young partners in blue, Hooker take on Lake City's toughest criminals.

Grace

Brighton based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job, but his career is currently at rock bottom. He’s fixated by the disappearance of his beloved wife, Sandy, and running enquiries into long forgotten cold cases with little prospect of success. Following another reprimand for his unorthodox police methods, Grace is walking a career tightrope and risks being moved from the job he loves most.

Crime Story

The hard-boiled saga of hair-trigger cop Lieutenant Mike Torello and his obsessive pursuit of ruthless gangster Ray Luca.

Signora Volpe

After years as an MI6 operative, Sylvia winds up in a village in Umbria visiting her sister Isabel and becomes involved in a murder investigation.

Doctor Prisoner

An ace doctor in a university hospital is wrongfully accused of a medical malpractice incident and gets ousted from the hospital. He then applies to work at a prison, where he plans to make personal connections with all the big shots in prison with the ultimate goal of getting revenge against the hospital that kicked him out.

Colditz

Colditz is a British television series co-produced by the BBC and Universal Studios and screened between 1972 and 1974. The series deals with Allied prisoners of war imprisoned at the supposedly escape-proof Colditz Castle when designated Oflag IV-C during World War II, and their many attempts to escape captivity, as well as the relationships formed between the various nationalities and their German captors.

In the Mud

Five female prisoners forge a unique bond after a deadly accident... until corruption and turf wars within a ruthless prison threaten to destroy them.

Evilive

A hardworking lawyer who randomly selects prisoners to visit and find jobs for himself meets a former baseball player who is also the second in command of a criminal organization. Will he be able to resist the temptations of evil?

Prison Chronicles

The series takes you inside some of the world’s most notorious prisons. Every episode delves into the unique history of a specific prison, showcasing its wildest practices, infamous inmates, harrowing events, and ingenious escapes. Spanning 1,000 years, the series covers legendary institutions from the historic Tower of London to today’s high-tech ADX, where El Chapo is currently held. Through interviews with journalists, former correctional officers, and previously incarcerated individuals, the series offers an authentic glimpse into the inner workings of these prisons.

Orange Is the New Black

A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

Banged Up: Teens Behind Bars

Eight British teen tearaways are incarcerated in one of America's toughest jails in a bid to divert them from a life of crime.

The Escape of the Seven

The mysterious disappearance of a girl brings together seven people from all different walks of life. They all have an intertwined connection to her disappearance in the most horrific, unfathomable, and despicable way. As money drives them to their greed, lies, and delirium, they face divine retribution as they struggle for their lives in a picturesque revenge. How far will they go to claim their innocence, and will anyone make it out alive?

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather is a British sitcom that was broadcast on BBC One from 1989 until 1998 and on ITV from 2013. Starring Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph, it was created by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who also wrote some of the episodes along with many other writers. The first episode sees sisters Tracey Stubbs and Sharon Theodopolopodos brought together when their husbands are sent to prison for armed robbery. Sharon, who lived in an Edmonton council flat, moves into Tracey's expensive house in Chigwell, Essex. Their next-door neighbour, and later friend, Dorien Green is a middle-aged married woman who is constantly having affairs with younger men. In the later series the location is changed to Hainault. The series ended on Christmas Eve 1998 after a 9-year-run.

Jailbirds

At the Sacramento County Jail, incarcerated women fight the power and one another as they try to make the best of life -- and love -- on the inside.

Unite 9

Marie Lamontagne, a widowed mother of two in her forties, confesses to a murder she didn't commit to protect her daughter. Thrust into brutally unfamiliar and hostile surroundings, she first learns survival, then confronts the biggest challenge of her life: bonding with her fellow inmates and helping them take back control of their lives.

Prison Break: Proof of Innocence

The story of Amber McCall as she attempts to uncover evidence to exonerate her friend, L.J. Burrows. A low-budget spin-off series of Prison Break made exclusively for mobile phones with each episode being approximately 2 minutes long. Although the story of this mobisode series revolve around the conspiracy that put Lincoln Burrows in jail, the series does not feature any of the actors from the TV series. Additionally, these episodes were not written by the team of writers from the TV series and the TV series does not acknowledge the events that occurred in this spinoff.

Tenko

Based on real-life experiences, Tenko remains one of the most fondly remembered and acclaimed BBC dramas of the early 1980s. It follows a group of women, formerly comfortably well-off ex-pats living in Singapore, as they are captured by the Japanese during World War II.

Court Martial: Soldiers Behind Bars

Life at the Military Corrective Training Centre with soldiers who've broken the law.

Piger i Vestre Fængsel

Oz

The daily lives of prisoners in Emerald City, an experimental unit of the Oswald Maximum Security Prison where ingroups - Muslims, Latinos, Italians, Aryans - stick close to their mutual friends and terrorize their mutual enemies.

Prisoner

Prisoner is an Australian soap opera that is set in the Wentworth Detention Centre, a fictional women's prison.

Made in Britain

Made in Britain is a 1983 British television play written by David Leland, and directed by Alan Clarke, about a 16-year-old racist skinhead named Trevor, and his constant confrontations with authority figures. It was originally broadcast on ITV on 10 July 1983 as the fourth in an untitled series of works by Leland, all loosely based around the British educational system, which subsequently acquired the overall title of Tales Out of School. As with many Alan Clarke works, the director attempts to depict English working-class life, realistically without moralising or complex plots. The play features strong language, violence, racism and an anti-establishment feeling. Cinematographer Chris Menges's use of the Steadicam contributed to the fluid and gritty atmosphere of the play.

Brotherhood

An honest lawyer reaches a moral crossroads after the cops force her to inform on her incarcerated brother, the leader of a rising criminal faction.

White Collar Convicts: Life on the Inside

CNBC original documentary goes behind prison walls to capture the raw experience of crooked CEOs, inside traders, embezzlers and other convicted corporate swindlers who are serving their time. CNBC profiles current and former inmates humbled by a fall from grace and forced to trade a life of wealth and prestige for one controlled by prison guards.