Prison Break Resurrection: Is it worth watching the series revival?

Eight years after the last episode, hit crime drama Prison Break is returning to UK screens and while the new series may have failed to win over some critics, fans are delighted.

Prison Break: Resurrection premiered in the US this week, ahead of hitting British TV with a nine-part run on Fox.

The original series was an overnight hit, with its gripping tale of brothers Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) and Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) - one on death row for a crime he did not commit, the other, a gifted architect - devising an elaborate plan to get justice.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Over four series, the brothers were incarcerated, escaped and locked up again as they played a cat-and-mouse game with a mysterious organisation known as The Company.

But the fourth series ended with Michael dead, killed while trying to free his wife Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies) from jail.

In Prison Break: Resurrection, however, he is very much alive.

It turns out that he faked his death and is now locked in a Yemini prison after working with a terrorist group - so if he doesn't escape, he's got real problems.

Despite the buzz surrounding the show, many critics were unimpressed with its return.

Jeff Jensen in Entertainment Weekly called it "exhaustingly mediocre", saying it should have been "a sharply plotted, zestfully performed, over-the-top pulp escapism", but wasn't.

Sadly, he adds, "you can see the better show trying to escape its lock-up of bad ideas".

Chris Cabin on Collider was never a big fan of the original series, but says the latest outing moves even further "toward total self-serious male fantasia".

However, he admits, "the plot gets going almost immediately" and keeps up a "high level of action" so those looking for adrenaline, accompanied by a little nostalgia, "will likely find exactly what they're looking for".

Cabin hopes, however, that Resurrection "will satisfy whatever itch the show's die-hards had" and "finally put an end to all of this".

Despite the mediocre reviews, US fans were ecstatic about the show's return and broadcast their delight on Twitter.

Prison Break: Resurrection starts at 9pm on Monday 10 April on Fox UK (Sky channel 124 and Virgin channel 157) and Now TV.