Banged Up review, Channel 4 prison reality series

Sid Owen is one of the celebrity inmates in Banged Up

(Image credit: Channel 4)

published 9 November 2023

Until recently, I figured that the "worst reality show to take part in" would be "I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!", because of "the bugs and the eating of the fish eyes", said Emily Baker in The i Paper. But Channel 4's new show "Banged Up" makes Ant and Dec's jungle purgatory "look like a spa break".

The four-part series features a handful of celebrities who are sent to serve eight days in a decommissioned prison (HMP Shrewsbury) so that they (and we) can be exposed "to the shocking realities of what it's really like" to be banged up. The celebs in question include Sid Owen, aka Ricky from "EastEnders", Neil Parish, the former Tory MP who was caught watching porn in the House of Commons, and the serving Tory MP Johnny Mercer. They follow prison rules, eat prison food and live alongside dozens of reformed ex-cons, who slip into their old prison personalities with "startling ease". Using a "fly on the wall" documentary style, the series is "entertaining" and surprisingly illuminating.

There are some "hammy" moments, said Sean O'Grady in The Independent: Owen's attempted break out is "particularly lame". But in the main, it's pretty realistic: "you can smell the sweat, the shit and the fear". It can be "a bit much", said James Jackson in The Times: at one point, Mercer's cellmate asks if he wants a fag, then pulls contraband tobacco out of his bottom, causing such a stench Mercer breaks a window to clear it. But it "might just provide a valuable contribution to the debate" about the prison system.