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

(Welcome to ...And More, our no-frills, zero B.S. guide to when and where you can watch upcoming movies and shows, and everything else you could possibly stand to know.)

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" 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.

"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.