The BEST episodes of History's Greatest Escapes with Morgan Freeman

Every episode of History's Greatest Escapes with Morgan Freeman ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of History's Greatest Escapes with Morgan Freeman!

Take a look back at the biggest jailbreaks from some of the most notorious prisons in the world.

Last Updated: 11/30/2024Network: HistoryStatus: Continuing
Belfast Breakout
star
7.63
38 votes

#1 - Belfast Breakout

Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 12/14/2021

Almost forty members of the IRA, locked up in HM Maze prison, attempt a daring escape.

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Alcatraz
star
7.58
62 votes

#2 - Alcatraz

Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/9/2021

Four men conspire to break out of one of the most notorious prisons in American history. What happened to three of them remains a mystery to this day.

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Escaping Hitler
star
7.56
43 votes

#3 - Escaping Hitler

Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 12/7/2021

Allied prisoners used all kinds of tactics to escape German Prisoner of War camps.

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Conquering the Wall
star
7.51
47 votes

#4 - Conquering the Wall

Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/30/2021

Six men, led by the mastermind, Nuno Pontes, attempt to escape Pittsburgh State Penitentiary.

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San Quentin Breakout
star
7.42
12 votes

#5 - San Quentin Breakout

Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 8/5/2024

A lifelong escape artist, Forrest Tucker, ends up in San Quentin prison; despite his advanced age, he manages to engineer one of the most audacious prison breaks of all time.

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El Chapo
star
7.40
45 votes

#6 - El Chapo

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 11/23/2021

El Chapo became one of the most notorious and murderous drug cartel kingpins in modern history. His audacious escapes from maximum-security prisons in Mexico became the stuff of legends. He is now in a US supermax prison in Colorado where he is remanded to this day.

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Fleeing Hellmira
star
7.38
32 votes

#7 - Fleeing Hellmira

Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 12/21/2021

Timothy Vail and Timothy Morgan were murderers incarcerated at Elmira State Prison in Elmira, N.Y.;. Vail wanted to escape, so he engaged Morgan in his plan to dig through the ceiling and flee from prison.

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North Country Breakout
star
7.36
44 votes

#8 - North Country Breakout

Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/16/2021

Stuck in prison on life sentences, Richard Matt and David Sweat executed one of the most involved escapes from an American prison.

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Assassin's Flight
star
7.13
40 votes

#9 - Assassin's Flight

Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/28/2021

James Earl Ray, confessed assassin of Martin Luther King, was a notorious escape artist. The most audacious of which was an attempt to escape Brushy Mountain State Prison.

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Tunneling to Freedom
star
7.00
13 votes

#10 - Tunneling to Freedom

Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 9/9/2024

During the Civil War, a daring prison break frees hundreds of captured Union soldiers. Colonel Thomas Rose was a schoolteacher before the Civil War. When he was captured and sent to Libby Prison in Richmond Virginia he engineered one of the greatest mass escapes in history.

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Fleeing Parchman
star
6.75
16 votes

#11 - Fleeing Parchman

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/22/2024

A lone wolf prisoner, with aspirations of writing crime novels, ends up the star of his own break out story when he figures out how to escape from one of Mississippi's oldest and most notorious prison farms, Parchman Penitentiary.

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Escaping Devil's Island
star
6.75
8 votes

#12 - Escaping Devil's Island

Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 8/26/2024

Rene Belbenoit, a petty thief is captured and sentenced to hard time at France's notorious penal colony in French Guiana. He determines to escape or die trying. After many years and numerous harrowing escapes--he finally gets free. His story becomes the basis of several popular movies in Hollywood.

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The Sobibor Revolt
star
6.55
11 votes

#13 - The Sobibor Revolt

Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 8/19/2024

During World War II, the Nazi war machine created specialized camps that were only used for one purpose, killing prisoners. Mainly Jews. They were called Death Camps. At Sobibor, in Poland, a small group of Jews that were forced to keep the camp operational for killing, engineered a daring mass escape that saved many of their lives. And helped bring the story of the holocaust to the rest of the world.

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Alton City Escape
star
6.50
12 votes

#14 - Alton City Escape

Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 9/2/2024

Quawntay Adams, a young African American man from a South-Central Los Angeles gets caught up in a large-scale marijuana bust and is sentenced to a long prison term. When he finds out he is going to be a father, he is determined to break out of his maximum-security cell--which he does.

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Vietnam POW Escape
star
6.45
11 votes

#15 - Vietnam POW Escape

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 7/29/2024

A German American pilot, Dieter Dengler, uses survival skills honed as a child to escape a secret prison in Laos during the early years of the Vietnam war.

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Breakout in Plain Sight
star
6.43
14 votes

#16 - Breakout in Plain Sight

Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 9/16/2024

An Iranian American psychopath is thrown into the men's city jail in Orange County Jail in Southern California. Before he gets sent to a higher security prison, he escapes by crawling up the plumbing chase and rappelling down the side of the five-story prison. It's a group effort but Hossein Nayeri, the mastermind, does not play well with others and the escapees turn on each other--and get caught.

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