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History's Greatest Escapes With Morgan Freeman

History's Greatest Escapes With Morgan Freeman

Interviews and re-creations bring some of history's most daring jailbreaks to life, detailing every step of the way, including the inmates' meticulous plans and the manhunts that followed; Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman, who starred in "Shawshank Redemption," a film focusing on the exploits of a group of inmates inside the fictional Shawshank State Penitentiary, hosts and executive produces the series; conversations with some of the prisoners, their families, their cellmates, guards and prison employees are used to round out the potrayals of famous escapes from Alcatraz, Dannemora, Pittsburgh State Penitentiary and other locations.
2 seasonsDocumentary, CrimeTV-14

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Season 18 of 8 Episodes

  • Four men conspire to break out of one of the most notorious prisons in American history; three of them break out using a makeshift raft and vanish.

  • Stuck in prison on life sentences, two men used engineering smarts and psychological manipulation of several prison employees to escape Dannemora Prison; Richard Matt and David Sweat executed one of the most involved escapes from an American prison.

  • The most notorious and murderous drug cartel kingpins in modern history.

  • Six men, led by the mastermind, Nuno Pontes, escaped Pittsburgh State Penitentiary by tunneling to freedom under the prison wall; they made it as far as Texas before being caught and returned to prison.

  • The story of the escape of more than 70 men from Stalag Luft III, a German prisoner of war camp; only three eventually survived.

  • HM Maze prison was a notorious lock-up for IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland; a small ring of IRA prisoners secretly planned what they hoped would be a massive prison break.

  • Timothy Vail and Timothy Morgan are murderers incarcerated at Elmira State Prison in Elmira, N.Y.; Vail wants to escape, so he engages Morgan in his plan to dig through the ceiling and flee from prison.

  • Looking at the many prison escapes of James Earl Ray, who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., including his escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison, Tennessee.

Record to Watch Later

9 episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks

    Assassin's Flight
    San Quentin Breakout
    Vietnam POW Escape
    Fleeing Parchman
    The Sobibor Revolt
    Alton City Escape
    Escaping Devil's Island
    Breakout in Plain Sight
    Tunneling to Freedom
  • Assassin's Flight

    Looking at the many prison escapes of James Earl Ray, who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., including his escape from Brushy Mountain State Prison, Tennessee.
    Upcoming
  • San Quentin Breakout

    A lifelong escape artist, Forrest Tucker, ends up in San Quentin prison; despite his advanced age, he manages to engineer an audacious prison break.
    Upcoming
  • Vietnam POW Escape

    A German American pilot, Dieter Dengler, uses survival skills honed as a child to escape a secret prison in Laos during the early years of the Vietnam War.
    Upcoming
  • Fleeing Parchman

    A lone wolf prisoner, with aspirations of writing crime novels, ends up the star of his own break-out story when he figures out how to escape from one of Mississippi's oldest and most notorious prison farms, Parchman Penitentiary.
    Upcoming
  • The Sobibor Revolt

    During World War II, the Nazi war machine creates specialized death camps; at Sobibor, in Poland, a small group of Jews engineer a mass escape and help bring the story of the Holocaust to the rest of the world.
    Upcoming
  • Alton City Escape

    Quawntay Adams, a young African American man from Los Angeles gets caught up in a large-scale marijuana bust and is sentenced to a long prison term; when he finds out he is going to be a father, he determines to break out of his cell.
    Upcoming
History's Greatest Escapes With Morgan Freeman

More about History's Greatest Escapes With Morgan Freeman

Interviews and re-creations bring some of history's most daring jailbreaks to life, detailing every step of the way, including the inmates' meticulous plans and the manhunts that followed; Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman, who starred in "Shawshank Redemption," a film focusing on the exploits of a group of inmates inside the fictional Shawshank State Penitentiary, hosts and executive produces the series; conversations with some of the prisoners, their families, their cellmates, guards and prison employees are used to round out the potrayals of famous escapes from Alcatraz, Dannemora, Pittsburgh State Penitentiary and other locations.

Starring

Morgan Freeman, Gary Brierley, Michael Dyke, Michael Esslinger, David Widner, Hugh Hunt

16 Free Episodes

No sign-up required

  • Four men conspire to break out of one of the most notorious prisons in American history; three of them break out using a makeshift raft and vanish.

  • Stuck in prison on life sentences, two men used engineering smarts and psychological manipulation of several prison employees to escape Dannemora Prison; Richard Matt and David Sweat executed one of the most involved escapes from an American prison.

  • The most notorious and murderous drug cartel kingpins in modern history.

  • Six men, led by the mastermind, Nuno Pontes, escaped Pittsburgh State Penitentiary by tunneling to freedom under the prison wall; they made it as far as Texas before being caught and returned to prison.

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