Prison Break (TV Series) (Blu-ray)

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Joliet Prison, famous for housing such fictional characters as The Blues Brothers and such real-life murderers as John Wayne Gacy, is the site of this popular Fox show, which doesn't exactly have the panache of "24." But it's just as addictive if you give it a chance, and that's because the writers and directors of "Prison Break" offer a textbook study in how to plot a good old-fashioned melodrama with more cliffhangers than a '30s serial.

Just about every scene has some surprise, whether it's a new revelation or an unexpected stumbling block. Then again, at Joliet Prison there are more gangs inside the walls than there are outside of it in nearby Chicago. There are black gangs, white gangs, Hispanics, mobsters, and even guards. Forget the clichéd caution about bending over. You can't even walk through this place without offending someone or stepping on someone else's "turf."

Like "24," and all those HBO dramatic series that paved the way, "Prison Break" employs cinematography and big-budget production values that we normally see on the big screen. It's what makes the rawness and grittiness of the show all the more in-your-face. Though it's network TV, there's an awful lot of graphic violence. There may not be the steady stream of expletives that we get from Tony Soprano's gang, or the sexual content that's become a part of shows like "Desperate Housewives," this show still has a rough edge to it.

Wentworth Miller stars as Michael Scofield, a Chicago-based structural engineer who robs a bank just so he can get tossed into the same maximum-security prison as his brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell). It turns out that both of these guys are "good" guys. Lincoln was framed for the murder of the Vice President's brother, and it's Michael's plan to use blueprints that his firm designed in order to help him break his brother out of Joliet before his execution date. So like "24," there's a sense of urgency here that pervades every episode. Assisting Michael on the outside is their childhood friend and Lincoln's attorney and former girlfriend (Robin Tunney), and in prison Michael soon finds the doctor (Sarah Wayne Callies) to be sympathetic.

The high-concept premise, as fans of the show know, is that Michael has had the blueprints tattooed all over his upper body and hidden in elaborate designs. As he plots his escape, it seems that more and more convicts end up climbing onboard, complicating matters. And the conspiracy that put Lincoln in prison starts to widen as well. Even family members on the outside find that their lives are becoming impossibly tough. A lot is at stake here, and so people will do anything to ensure that they're protected . . . or personally taken care of. People get killed, roughed up, framed, and pushed into hiding.

As you'd expect with a high-concept primetime melodrama, the characters have plenty of recognizable clichés, but a few of the cast members stand out. Miller is a charismatic lead, while Peter Stormare is superb as a prison mob stooge and Robert Knepper brings a creepy realism to the series chief villain, a murderous pedophile. With such a decent cast, even Stacy Keach rises above his usual hammy performances in order to play the warden with believability.

The first 21 episodes lead up to an escape attempt that finally occurs in the season finale, with the spotlight along the way falling mostly on Miller and his circle as they try to hatch his elaborate scheme, but also on conspirators and family members. It's too bad, though, that the decision was made to stretch the series from the 13 episodes originally planned, because the narrative starts to feel drawn out in spots. It's also too bad that brand placement makes it so that when there's breaking news on this show, only Fox News is on the scene, which pulls you out of the illusion of reality. Curiously, while Fox News has been accused of being biased toward Republicans and the current administration, the real bad guys in Prison Break bear a striking resemblance to Bush minions and cronies. There's even a topical reference to prisoner abuses in Iraq that have consequences not for the perpetrators, but for the whistleblower. So much for bias. Did the Fox censors not catch this?