Description

The secret world of the Parole Board opens its doors for the first time to television cameras so that viewers can see eight prisoners who are trying to get out of jail early. Two years in the making, 8 prisoners are filmed as they attempt to persuade the Parole Board that they are no longer a danger to society and should be released. The Parole Board, who hear them pleading their cases, know that if they believe them now and release them, but later the prisoners commit new crimes, they will be blamed. With brutally honest interviews and rare filming from within prisons viewers witness the stories unfolding so that they can decide for themselves if they’d set the prisoners free and whether they agree with the Parole Board’s final decisions.

Rarely does a programme engage your faculties as this one did. It never dictated what one was supposed to think, and was mature enough to acknowledge the less than exciting truth; that the parole system is generally good, if imperfect.

The Independent on Sunday

It’s well worth watching to the end, when life delivers the kind of twist that documentary makers pray for, and that flips our judgments as neatly as a pancake.

Radio Times