Prisoner‘s trailer felt like Bruce Willis’ 2006 action/drama 16 Blocks, where his exhausted, long-in-the-tooth detective just HAD to get Mos Def to the court on time in order to testify about a crime bigwig, despite baddies going after them including bad cops.
Here, Eddie Marsan plays Eddie Marsan once again, running Big Cop Station, where crime-lord-that-looks-like-a-banker Harrison Dempsey is going on trial for drugs trafficking and so on. Only foreign baddie Tibor Stone (Tahar Rahim – The Serpent) can give evidence to put Dempsey away for good, and for this, he’ll get a reduced sentence and go into Witness Protection.
Meanwhile, diverted from their usual task to pick him up are convict transporters Amber Todd (Izuka Hoyle – Boiling Point) and Joe Sutherland (Steven Elder – formerly the Priest from Doctors who went off with Mrs Tembe, but also the Prime Minister in ITV’s Secret Service). It’ll be under armed guard, so everything will be fine, right? Erm…
However, while it has a good start with rather a Hans Zimmer-style soundtrack, it soon fall into cliché territory as they get stopped in a tunnel, blocked by two cars having crashed into each other.
Prisoner is remarkably stupid and highly unbelievable. How does bashing a defibrillator battery ensure it’ll catch fire, and ensures it’ll lead to damaged vehicle exploding? Even then, it’ll only delay the baddies temporarily, as opposed to making them think, “Nah, let’s go home and watch Corrie”.
And as shown in the trailer, Amber handcuffs herself to Tibor in order to stop him running, yet she has a baby at home, so the sensible thing would’ve been to let the baddies take him, she stay safe inside the van, and fuck whatever happens to Tibor. But then that would end the programme rather quickly.
It’s a 90-minute movie stretched out to a series, and above Mr Marsan, adding in Catherine McCormack (Lockerbie: A Search For Truth) as Snarly Final Female Boss Josephine Cambell, few BAFTA acting awards are getting dished out for this one.
Thanks to our friends at Sky for the screener prior to release.
Prisoner begins Thursday April 30th on Sky Atlantic.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes per episode (6 episodes)
Release date: April 30th 2026
Studio: Sky Atlantic
Format: 2.00:1
Series Directors: Otto Bathurst, Pia Strietmann
Producers: Haleema Mirza, Barney Reisz
Writers: Matt Charman, Haleema Mirza
Music: Rupert Gregson-Williams
Cast:
Amber Todd: Izuka Hoyle
Tibor Stone: Tahar Rahim
Nancy Howard: Jessica Barker-Wren
Joe Sutherland: Steven Elder
Sandeep Varma: Ranjit Krishnamma
Eddie Marsan: Eddie Marsan
Josephine Cambell: Catherine McCormack
Will O’Neill: Sam Troughton
Olly Hatton: Finn Bennett
Harrison Dempsey: Brían F O’Byrne
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.