4/5 Pretty Good, But...
  by M. Thompson (Eburg)
I thought this show was one of the most gripping, maybe even the most tense thing I can remember watching on TV, perhaps ever. I am not going to elaborate too much on what happens, but it is very exciting, the actors do a great job in their roles and the writing is outstanding. Just a few negatives though. Fully realizing this is not reality but fiction, I really hope most prison guards are not this evil and conversely not that ignorant of such a big scale breakout(relatively speaking). There were many times when I rooted solely for the bad guys because the guards were so vile and mean(beatings, extortion, killing an inmates cat for no good reason). The warden was pretty fair, but those guards. Check this out, because the positives far outdistance the negatives here.

5/5 Addicting
  by E. Russell (Ellensburg, WA United States)
What can I say about Prison Break except it's addicting!! I got season 1 to see what it was like and couldn't get 2-4 and The Final Break here quick enough!! Michael and Lincoln and the rest of the gang are very good characters the twist and turns in the plot and the action is non-stop! Neither one of us could pry ourselves away from watching this show and couldn't wait to get home after work to pick up where we left off. Unbelieveable good show!!

5/5 Prison Break's clever premise, tense drama and fascinating characters shoot it above most serialized dramas
  by Darius Williamson
If you have an older brother on death row that got framed for murdering the Vice President's brother, how far would you go to prevent his execution? Unlike the rest of us, Michael Scofield decides to get his hands dirty and conjure up an escape plan that would make the `Escape from Alcatraz' inmates feel proud. How? Step one: be the structural engineer that previously worked on the max security penitentiary his brother, Lincoln Burrows, is imprisoned under. Step two: tattoo the prison's blueprints onto your entire torso. Step three: fake a bank robbery and get thrown into Fox River prison. Step four: create a route to freedom, which may require the assistance of other belligerent convicts and prison staffers (including the kind-hearted doc and warden). Step five: escape, and run like hell.

I don't envy him, but boy is it fun to watch Scofield frantically scramble to save his flesh and blood.

The same goes for Prison Break itself, which successfully combines the fragile prison hierarchy of `Oz' with the frenetic, tense action of `24', Fox's other flagship thriller. The crazy concept works partly because Scofield's a likable protagonist viewers can root for. Actor Wentworth Miller plays the quirky genius with enough charm, but thanks to his unimposing physicality, Miller also breathes an impenetrable stoicism into him that needs to endure through treacherous, often masochistic trials to reach the end goal. Within two episodes, it's clear that his success, and maybe his survival, depends on it.

Adding to the stress is the ruthless `Company', the shadow organization behind Lincoln's fabricated murder. They not only aim to truncate Scofield's plans on liberating Lincoln, they also want to halt the investigation that Lincoln's lawyer/ex-girlfriend Veronica initiated to unearth the cover up that framed him. The deeper she digs to discover the ugly truth, the more she opens up a can of worms, and subsequently, the more the body count grows.

PB is without doubt a fairly grim, nihilistic show, and the violent content is on par with `24's' most squeamish scenes. However, don't think PB drowns in hopelessness. There's plenty of humor sprinkled throughout to counterbalance the bleak tone. Witnessing every step of Scofield's ingenious plan is also part of the addictive fun, just to see how he escapes every dangerous mess that crops up.

Any potential viewer will have to make one compromise though: swallow PB's preposterousness. True, speaking on a primetime TV show's ridiculous qualities is redundant, but with PB, unless you're willing to seriously suspend disbelief, you'll catch yourself screaming "WTF?!" somewhere down the road and angrily shutting off the DVD player. If that's not an issue, you'll find PB season one to be an exhilarating, tense experience.

Alas, it can also be a frustrating one. While the first thirteen episodes are tightly written and well paced, the latter nine feel uneven, rushed and deluded with quality-killing filler sideplots. Also, at that point, Scofield's clever actions get increasingly asinine, and the plot runs around in unprogressive circles. A `Lost'-style flashback episode, in contrast, feels hastily constructed and crudely focused. At times, it feels like the writers had to stretch the material thin enough to fit 22 episodes, instead of a more cohesive 18.

Luckily, the supporting cast helped PB season one get through its rough patch. Some of PB's central prisoners, like mob boss John Abruzzi and white supremacist/serial rapist T-Bag, seem like prison genre clichés at first, but their respective actors flesh them out past any predictable archetype. The same goes with security guard Brad Bellick, who's the kind of prick anyone would loathe. The mix of personalities clashing within the prison's claustrophobic confines makes for exciting banter and interconnected conflicts. On the `Company's' end, Agent Kellerman brings a frightening physical presence to the organization through his numerous assassinations outside the prison walls. He's just as creepy as the `Others', back in `Lost's' own first season.

After you get off the roller-coaster-ride, you'll most likely want to buy the other Prison Break DVD sets, but honestly, it's tough to recommend them beyond the second season. While season two is decent, seasons three and four are unwatchable train wrecks (they weren't pre-planned like the first two seasons and that really shows). However, the first year is a gem, and unlike most other primetime shows on TV.


5/5 Once again, a winner from FOX
  by Harold Edward Wills (Hagerstown, Maryland USA)
This series proves, as did Bones, that a drama doesn't have to have unending obsenities to be "contemporary and real."
Totally absorbing and addictive, the casting, acting, plot twists are all a great ride.
The picture quality is also impressive...almost HD!
It's just so sad that Fox never answers their emails.

5/5 Brilliant, though with inherent limitations
  by Robin Benson

Having just sat through the sixteen hours of this first Break (over five days though) I'm pleased to see that the overall impression of Amazon customers is that this is a winner and rightly so. The story is most likely known to you considering how much PR this first season generated. I was very impressed by the way the writers consistently came up with credible twists and turns and I particularly like the secondary story of the government political intrigue which took the action outside the confines of the prison.

A couple of points occurred to me while watching the episodes. The forty minute length of each part meant that twenty-one cliffhangers had to be created to pull the viewers into next week's show. This creates some rather artificial plotting situations which could have been avoided if the length was longer but that is one of the problems of network TV being ad supported. The other point is more critical and goes to the authenticity of Prison Break. Because it was a network show there is a complete absence of swearing. Prisons by their nature are probably the most aggressive male environments around and to have bored and desperate convicts not expressing themselves in the only way they know how seems to lack credibility. More so for poorly paid guards, who in the program, lose no opportunity to express their disdain and frustration for their charges but express this in dialog that has to be acceptable to Middle America. Had the show been on HBO or Showtime I feel the writers would have created dialog with more strength which would have given Prison Break an extra layer of realism.

The last disc has some worthwhile extras: a thirty minute Making of...feature that tends to be the usual back-slapping stuff from the principal actors and creative team but did have some interesting material about shooting scenes in Joliet. A fascinating sixteen minute feature about creating the tattoo that covered Wentworth Miller's body: about two hundred hours of work and $15,000 to $20,000 if it was for real. A short about the history of Joliet (closed in 2002) and now part of the Illinois Film Office property inventory.

Despite the constraints of the show being on network TV this is well worth seeing and I know I'll be watching it more than once plus there is the supreme luxury of seeing it ad free!