The New Stanford Prison Experiment is a Netflix reality series that tries to recreate and improve upon the famous 1971 experiment where Stanford students volunteered to be either inmates or guards in a mock prison. But while that 14-day experiment failed after six days as outside influence and other factors made things spiral out of control, the producers of this new version are trying to keep outside influence to a minimum.
Opening Shot: A view of a prison in Georgia. One of the participants in the series is asked if he’s ever been in prison before, and he says no.
The Gist: Thirty participants, including 3 women, selected from a cross-section of Americans, enter the prison in Georgia and are immediately split into two groups: 22 inmates and 8 guards. Three experts — behavioral psychologist Alison Wood Brooks, journalist Trymaine Lee, and corrections professional Michael Cantrell — watch the feeds of multiple robot cameras from a separate room and provide commentary.
During the first of the 14 days, most of the inmate participants want to go along to get along. But one participant, who spent a number of days behind bars during his younger years, starts stressing out over being back in that environment. Another inmate, who is a middle school teacher, vows to stir the pot by pulling pranks on the guards. And while the night shift guards are led by an entrepreneur who promotes trust and mutual respect, the day shift guards are led by an oil rig supervisor who feels that rules should be followed to the letter and punishments like lockdowns and being sent to solitary are absolutely necessary.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you want to see a docuseries about the Stanford prison experiment, watch the Nat Geo series The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unlocking The Truth. The format of The New Stanford Prison Experiment reminds us of the reality series Unlocked: A Jail Experiment.
Our Take: One of the things that we kept saying to ourselves as we watched The New Stanford Prison Experiment was “These people volunteered to do this!” It was hard to put that out of our minds and just watch things play out. Given that there was no prize or anything else at the end of the experiment, we wondered why anyone would sign up to be locked up and be ordered around by a seemingly random group of people who just happen to be wearing different uniforms.
There are parts of this experiment that don’t quite jibe with the idea that there’s little to no outside influence, like the different tenors of the day shift and night shift guards. It just so happened that one group is led by a hard-ass and the other is led by a guy who seems like he’s playing improv games with the inmates? It feels too neat to us. And the one inmate who is there to foment chaos… why does he seem to be the only one? You’d think that if you volunteered to get locked up, you’d try some things, just to pass the time and make things interesting.
But, aside from people like the retired cop who has a panic attack when his cell door is locked and the former juvenile delinquent who has bad flashbacks, it seems like everyone else just wants to “do their time,” which is really no fun on a show like this.
Parting Shot: In a side interview, the crap-stirring history teacher says he plans on getting inmates on his side and “take over this whole thing.”
Our Call: SKIP IT. We’re marginally interested in The New Stanford Prison Experiment in a “rubbernecking as we pass an accident” kind of way, but we’re going to be constantly watching and wondering why anyone in their right mind would volunteer to get locked up for no reason, and why the producers said they didn’t interfere when they so clearly did.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
