# What is the best prison crime TV series?

> Gritty cell-block dramas, escape thrillers and women's-prison soaps from several countries, some ruthless and some surprisingly warm. Time served ranges from a single season to decades.

*By YPB Team · Published October 21, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-prison-crime-tv-series*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Prison Break** — score 1000/1000
   A structural engineer gets himself jailed to break his death-row brother out of Fox River penitentiary.
2. **Oz** — score 856/1000
   HBO's brutal 1997 drama about the inmates and staff of an experimental unit in a maximum-security prison.
3. **Alcatraz** — score 660/1000
   Fox mystery in which the island prison's long-vanished inmates and guards reappear in the present day.
4. **Prison Playbook** — score 642/1000
   Korean drama about a baseball star jailed for assault, praised for its warm and funny take on prison life.
5. **Escape at Dannemora** — score 513/1000
   Limited series dramatizing the real 2015 breakout of two killers from a New York maximum-security prison.
6. **Wentworth** — score 513/1000
   Australian reimagining of Prisoner that follows a mild-mannered housewife thrown into a women's prison.
7. **El Marginal** — score 513/1000
   Argentine series about an ex-cop who goes undercover in the violent San Onofre prison.
8. **Time** — score 434/1000
   BBC drama following a teacher jailed for manslaughter and a prison officer under pressure, starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham.
9. **Orange Is the New Black** — score 434/1000
   Netflix dramedy following a woman serving time in a women's federal prison for an old drug offence.
10. **Prisoner: Cell Block H** — score 233/1000
   Long-running Australian soap set inside a women's prison, a cult classic since 1979.
11. **Vis a Vis** — score 233/1000
   Spanish thriller, also called Locked Up, about an ordinary secretary sent to a women's prison and the criminal world inside.
12. **The Night Of** — score 233/1000
   HBO miniseries in which a young man accused of murder is held at Rikers Island while his case unfolds.
13. **Screw** — score 0/1000
   British series seen through the eyes of the officers working inside an overstretched prison.
14. **Within These Walls** — score 0/1000
   1970s British drama set in a women's prison, an early landmark of the prison genre.

Tags: tv shows, crime, prison