Hot Picks: Banged Up

A group of celebrities experience life behind bars in a new constructed-reality format from Shine TV (Hunted; The Island With Bear Grylls). That may sound like a familiar idea, but Banged Up has different motives to its adventure competition predecessors.

“This is not a survival show in a prison and nor is it ‘celebrities in prison’, but a social experiment in which people with a vested interest in the prison system actually experience what it is like,” says Shine creative director and executive producer Tim Whitwell.

“We are seeing humanity stripped bare in very authentic scenarios.”

Whitwell devised the format while filming a sequence for Celebrity Hunted last year in HMS Shrewsbury. “I was stuck in a small, damp, smelly cell with peeling wall paint and a rusty old bed and I was getting freaked out in that space even though I was only in there for 30 minutes,” he says. “What if we could send a cast of experts and people with strong views on law and order to prison and mix them with real former inmates to understand what it’s actually like to be locked up?”

In Banged Up, commissioned by Channel 4’s documentary team, six well-known inmates are incarcerated alongside a variety of real criminals, including those who have served long sentences for serious crimes.

Since the Ministry of Justice wouldn’t permit any TV company to rig a real prison with cameras, Shine converted a decommissioned Victorian gaol (now a museum) back into a functioning prison wing with drinking water, toilets and showers, and a CCTV-style fixed rig.

“It had to be a safe environment,” says Whitwell. “We had to make sure, for example, the cell doors locked and we had weight-bearing safety netting.”

The cast includes EastEnders actor Sid Owen, whose father was imprisoned for armed robbery, Gogglebox star Marcus Luther, who has little sympathy for anyone sent to jail, Mail On Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, who voices similarly hard-line views, and a former MP familiar with the prison system.

“They went in with preconceived ideas and came out changed in some way,” Whitwell says. “Every celebrity is locked up in a cell 24/7 with a former criminal, showering and going to the loo in front of them. This is quite full on – the celebrities have to be tough to even agree to do this.”

“There’s a wide range of people for an audience to get to know and to want to follow their narrative”

Whitwell says the format has broad appeal since everyone has an opinion on crime and punishment. “We also wanted to appeal to young people,” he adds. “Our cast of reformed criminals range from a contract killer who spent 23 years behind bars to juvenile delinquents.

“There’s a wide range of people for an audience to get to know and to want to follow their narrative.”

Since every country has prisons and law and order issues, it shouldn’t be hard to replicate the format, Whitwell says, pointing to the “huge knowledge” Shine has amassed on how to run it.

While Banged Up examines a male-only prison experience, versions of the show could focus on female-only prisons or segregated male and female wings, he notes.

“With cameras in the cells at all times, we capture men talking to men and eavesdrop on conversations that you’d never be able to record in a regular prison doc,” Whitwell adds.