Britain's Notorious Prisons: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

Britain's Notorious Prisons reveals the reality of life behind the walls of two of the UK's most infamous prisons, Strangeways and Wormwood Scrubs.

Manchester's Strangeways and London's Wormwood Scrubs have housed some of the country's most dangerous convicts, including serial killers, rapists and paedophiles.

Featuring exclusive first-hand testimony from past inmates and staff, this two-part series for ITV and ITVX uncovers what really goes on behind the famous prison gates, uncovering the drug abuse, violence and some of the biggest events in both prisons' histories. 

The two-part series highlights the past behaviour of some prison officers and the abuse of power, which had a detrimental impact on the running of the prisons and added to the hostile environments that prisoners became accustomed to. 

The programmes investigate a vast array of issues impacting the prisons including the overt racism in the seventies and eighties in Strangeways, extreme prisoner violence in Wormwood Scrubs, and the potential long lasting impact of covid on the prison system.

As we hear from those who lived and breathed the prisons over the decades, the raw, uncut stories need to be seen to be believed, as the shocking truth is explained and interrogated.

Series details

• Title: Britain's Notorious Prisons
• Format: Documentary
• Language: English
• Premiere date: 2023-01-12
• Status in TVmaze: Running
• Network listed by TVmaze: ITV1
• Network country: United Kingdom
• Typical episode runtime: 60 minutes
• TVMaze ID: 66354
• TVDB ID: 429610

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 2023-01-12; final listed air date 2023-01-19; episode order: 2.

Source and licence

Adapted from Britain's Notorious Prisons on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.