Britain's Notorious Prisons reveals the reality of life behind the walls of two of the UK's most infamous prisons, Strangeways and Wormwood Scrubs.

Manchester's Strangeways and London's Wormwood Scrubs have housed some of the country's most dangerous convicts, including serial killers, rapists and paedophiles.

Featuring exclusive first-hand testimony from past inmates and staff, this two-part series for ITV and ITVX uncovers what really goes on behind the famous prison gates, uncovering the drug abuse, violence and some of the biggest events in both prisons' histories. 

The two-part series highlights the past behaviour of some prison officers and the abuse of power, which had a detrimental impact on the running of the prisons and added to the hostile environments that prisoners became accustomed to. 

The programmes investigate a vast array of issues impacting the prisons including the overt racism in the seventies and eighties in Strangeways, extreme prisoner violence in Wormwood Scrubs, and the potential long lasting impact of covid on the prison system.

As we hear from those who lived and breathed the prisons over the decades, the raw, uncut stories need to be seen to be believed, as the shocking truth is explained and interrogated.