Banged Up: A Sadistic Display in the Name of Television

Ban the E-word. We have to put a stop to shows being billed as 'experiments', giving them a spurious justification when really they are devised solely to torment celebrities.

Banged Up (Ch4) is not a sociological experiment, it's not a psychological investigation, and it's not any sort of scientific trial.

It's the television equivalent of sadistic children pulling the wings off flies and the legs off spiders... and calling it a 'biology lesson'.

There's nothing to be learned from watching three men who are vaguely familiar, but not famous, spending a week in a former prison with a bunch of ex-cons pretending to be inmates, watched over by a handful of retired screws.

The whole thing was a shabby excuse for displays of violence, intimidation, machismo and toilet humour.