7. Prison Break
Okay, I'm going to break my cardinal rule for this one. I haven't seen all of Prison Break and as such much of my research comes from reviews I have read. So why have I included it? Simply because I know enough about the show to know it deserves a place on the list. Prison Break was a show with a simple premise. Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) is wrongly imprisoned for murder. His brother Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) gets himself arrested and put in the same prison in order to formulate an escape plan that will set them both free. By the end of season one he does just that; the aforementioned prison break is over and are heroes go free... ...and spend three more seasons on the run, in a new prison and finally being recruited by Homeland Security. A show that moves so far beyond its original premise it has to put these characters in a second new prison just to incorporate another prison break. Even I can tell that the show achieved what it set out to do in a single season; perhaps it should have ended on that high rather than dragging the story in a whole other direction for three more years...