TV Eye: Bad boys, mad ploys

It opened with a tattoo scene and ended with a toe-chop.

In between, Prison Break, which debuted last night on TV3 with a movie-length premiere, featured many crimes, the primary one being the obnoxious smugness of its lead, Wentworth Miller.

He plays Michael Scofield, a structural engineer who robbed a bank so he could join his brother Lincoln in prison. Lincoln has been sentenced to death for the murder of the vice-president, a crime he claims he did not commit.

Given the number of prisons in the United States, the fact that Scofield landed inside the same one as his brother seemed implausible, but logic is not going to be the issue with this series.

Scofield, dubbed Fish by the other inmates in this scary place with a nice lawn, started dropping origami birds down drains and pretending to be a diabetic so he could frequent the infirmary with the pretty young female doctor. Despite his smirks she, rightly, deduced there was something not right about him.

Assuming the Fox River Pen is high-security because it houses death-row inmates, its security was rotten. No one seemed to notice that Fish's behaviour was suspicious as he slunk around the exercise yard undoing bolts, arranging pharmacy drug deals and chatting to his brother about his breakout plans, all the while staring at other inmates who would assist them. Possibly.

One of them, a mobster played by the fantastic Peter Stormare (the loony kidnapper in Fargo), was under pressure to get information out of Scofield, hence the toe-cutting finale.

A race riot was brewing, underpinned rather obviously by angry gangsta rap every time the camera lingered on the blacks.

There was a nasty nonce called T-Bag who was set up for the murder of his girlfriend and who fancied Fish. And an ancient inmate with a mysterious past who clutched a cat at all times. Poor cat.

The prison governor, known as The Pope, was played by Stacy Keach. The Pope had a soft spot for Fish, and asked him to fix a wonky model of the Taj Mahal he was building for his wife.

The Fish smirked and said no, but when he was given 96 days in lockup for starting a fight, he agreed to work on the Taj. As I said, unbelievable.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, there was an impossible-to-fathom conspiracy plot involving government goons, a bishop who got murdered, more mobsters, Lincoln's ex-girlfriend and snooping lawyer Veronica, and his teenage son, busted for possessing lots of pot.

"You're dead to me anyway," he shouted at his dad on a prison visit.

Cut to a luxury house and a mysterious woman wearing lots of bling who was chopping garlic. In between slices, she instructed a goon to eliminate Veronica.

The key to the prison break, we assume, is the jail's structural details tattooed all over Scofield's body. Because some years before, he'd worked on the prison refit. How handy.

Let's assume the lousy prison diet doesn't affect the proportions, and that a vital part of the diagram was not removed by the toe-chop. And, how can he read what's on his back?

Halfway through last night's programme, Lincoln, the doomed brother, turned to Scofield and moaned, "I'm in the dark here."

I know what you mean, Lincoln. There will have to be tangible revelations over the next 20 episodes if the series is to keep viewers locked in.

Because so far, it's all questions, no answers. Like, is the model of the Taj Mahal significant? Will Fish become T-Bag's new lady? And are the origami birds really a clue that Prison Break is, actually, cuckoo?