I actually ended up watching the first two episodes of this last night, on the strength of your recommendation . Wasn't bad at all . I thought that the inmates were actually in jail , but they were actually ex-cons , and I thought , well , that is a little bit contrived, but then I remembered the Standford Prison experimenet ( at least I think it was called that ) which got students to make a fake prision for a couple of weeks , and it had to be shut down because it got unbearably cruel , and they weren't even ex-cons , they were bright young university students. After I had that little back and forth in my head , I started to just enjoy it .