Great Escapes With Morgan Freeman Season 1: Release Date, Cast And More

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Morgan Freeman is certainly familiar with prison thanks to all the time he spent in the yard for "The Shawshank Redemption." Even though he wasn't the prisoner who hatched the unbelievable escape in Frank Darabont's film based on a novella by Stephen King, the Oscar-winning actor has been tapped to host a new nonfiction series on The History Channel called "Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman." After all, his name is right there in the title, so who else was going to host this show? If this is the first you're hearing of this series, we've got everything you need to know about the upcoming program, including the release date and more.

"Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman" will arrive on The History Channel this fall starting on November 9, 2021 at 10:00 P.M ET/PT. Premiering just a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, this eight-episode series might give you some ideas about how you can escape your family dinner so that you don't have to hear Uncle Bobby talk about how much 5G is in your COVID-19 vaccine that uses Bigfoot's DNA or whatever nonsense he's cooked up this year.

"Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman" isn't some kind of getaway destination travel program. Instead, Morgan Freeman hosts this nonfiction series that shines a light on some of history's greatest escapes from some of the most notorious prisons in the world. 

Dramatic recreations of the prison breaks will help tell the story alongside Morgan Freeman's own journey through their escape plan, thanks to the magic of cutting-edge visual effects. Audiences will follow along with every step of an inmate's meticulous plan as they try to make their escape from the likes of Alcatraz, Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York (which was at the center of Ben Stiller's "Escape at Dannemora" series at Showtime), the HM Maze Prison in Northern Ireland, the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee, and more.

Morgan Freeman is the host of "Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman," so he's the only major talent in the series. However, the dramatizations of these prison escapes will feature a variety of actors and actresses. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any famous faces among them, so don't go looking for Tim Robbins to wink at the camera from a nearby cell when someone prepares to make their great escape.

"Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman" hasn't revealed who is directing or writing these episodes, and we don't know who the showrunner is either.  But the filmmakers behind these kinds of shows often aren't put at the forefront of the show's marketing. However, Morgan Freeman is serving as an executive producer, and he'll be joined by Lori McCreary, James Younger, Kelly Mendelsohn and Geoffrey Sharp as executive producers for Revelations Entertainment and Jennifer Wagman and Max Micallef as executive producers for The History Channel. 

Here's the official synopsis for "Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman" from The History Channel:

Prisons are designed to keep the bad guys on the inside. But for some captive geniuses, those prison walls are just another crime waiting to happen. Some of the greatest stories ever told start behind bars. Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman takes you through the most notorious prison breaks, every suspenseful moment of their escapes. Even the best laid plans can go wrong.