--- title: "Escape at Dannemora" year: 2018 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/escape-at-dannemora" fi1m_score: 74 critics_score: 74 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-17T18:25:38.905811+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T18:25:39.272687+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Escape at Dannemora (2018) Created by Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin · 51m · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Crime **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 74 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* Seven episodes in a tailor shop with two murderers and the woman who cannot believe her luck > Ben Stiller’s seven-part account of the 2015 escape from a New York state prison is superbly acted, above all by Patricia Arquette and Eric Lange, and a good two hours too long. Worth your evenings, if you can sit still through the middle ones. ## Synopsis Dannemora, upstate New York, 2015. Joyce ‘Tilly’ Mitchell (Patricia Arquette) supervises the tailor shop at Clinton Correctional Facility and is sleeping with one of the inmates in it, David Sweat (Paul Dano). Her husband Lyle (Eric Lange) works at the prison too and drives her in. When Sweat is moved off the shop, his friend Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro), a painter who trades canvases for favours with officer Gene Palmer (David Morse), takes his place at the machines and in Tilly’s attention. The series opens after the fact: Governor Andrew Cuomo (Michael Imperioli) is shown a hole cut in a cell wall, and Tilly sits across a table from state investigator Catherine Scott (Bonnie Hunt), explaining herself. ## Review In June 2015 two convicted murderers cut their way out of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, upstate New York, with the help of the woman who ran the prison tailor shop. Ben Stiller has made seven episodes of it, from scripts by Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin and Jerry Stahl, and the break itself is not what interests him. He wants to know why she did it, and what each of the three people at the centre thought they were getting. It takes him all seven episodes to answer. Patricia Arquette’s Tilly is the reason to watch. She is vain, sulky and not especially bright, a woman who has decided that a small prison town owes her something and that David Sweat (Paul Dano), a lifer, is it. Arquette gives her a downturn at the mouth and a way of talking to the inmates as if she were the one being done a favour. We could not stop watching her, because she is the only person in the series who does not know how she looks. David C. Robinson dresses her in fleeces and denim that have been through the wash too often. Benicio del Toro’s Richard Matt is the older man on the block, a painter who does portraits for the guards, and del Toro plays him almost horizontal: heavy eyelids, a slow voice, a man who has worked out that the one who waits gets what he wants. David Morse’s Gene Palmer, the officer who takes the paintings and looks away when asked, shows how a whole institution goes soft one small favour at a time. Dano is the engineer, wiry and patient. He does the actual cutting, and he has the fewest lines of the three. Jessica Lee Gagné shoots the prison in the flat white light of a northern New York winter and follows people through it in long unbroken takes, down the catwalks behind the cells and along the pipes below them, so we learn the building as the escapers do. Mark Ricker’s tailor shop is fluorescent tube, grey sewing machines and racks of finished trousers. Edward Shearmur keeps the score small and lets the building make the noise: machines, steam, steel on steel. We were bored across the fourth and fifth hours. The writers keep returning to the same handful of scenes: Tilly sulking at the kitchen table, Tilly flirting across a cutting bench, two men measuring a wall. Then the crawl came, Sweat working his way along a steam pipe with a torch and not much air, Gagné’s camera in there with him and no cut for what felt like several minutes, and we felt our own sitting room shrink. It is the best thing Stiller has directed, and the series makes us wait a long time for it. The performance that stayed with us is Eric Lange’s Lyle Mitchell, Tilly’s husband, who works at the prison too and drives her in. He buys what she asks for and believes what she tells him, and Lange plays him without a flicker of suspicion, a big soft man who thinks his marriage is fine. We winced each time he was kind to her, because we knew what she did with her afternoons and he did not. Bonnie Hunt, as the state investigator, brings an unimpressed patience to the framing scenes. Perhaps a third of the series is not needed, and most critics have said as much. Watch two episodes at a sitting rather than one; on its own, each hour can feel like a week in Dannemora. It is a 15 certificate, mostly for what Tilly and the men get up to behind a rack of finished trousers, and none of it is filmed to be enjoyed. That, at least, is the right decision. *Fi1m score 74, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it, and the praise lands almost entirely on the cast. Patricia Arquette’s Tilly Mitchell is named in nearly every review as the reason to watch, with Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano close behind. Ben Stiller’s direction draws steady credit for making a familiar prison-break story feel cinematic and claustrophobic, and several reviews note the care taken over small, closely observed detail. The reservation is length. Seven hours, most agree, is more than the story needs, and even the warmer reviews concede it meanders. The spread is fairly wide: Collider finds it tense from start to finish, while The Hollywood Reporter calls the pacing a real problem and the characters too unpleasant to spend that long with. Variety adds that the story lacks any pressing reason to be told now. Nobody disputes the acting; the argument is over whether it justifies the running time. ### Reviews we read (9) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (90/100, inferred): Ben Stiller's direction makes the prison drama riveting. Patricia Arquette delivers a stunning performance in the odd throuple with Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/ben-stiller-escape-at-dannemora-review-showtime-prison-1202019914/) - **The AV Club**, Laura Bogart (A-): The premiere establishes that everyone longs to escape the grubbiness of their lives in subtle, poignant ways beyond the literal prison break. Arquette's Tilly seethes with internal ugliness and yearning in a marvelous performance. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/in-a-compelling-chapter-one-escape-at-dannemora-show-1830481005) - **The Telegraph** (4/5): The critic finds the miniseries a slow-burn prison-break drama boosted by its excellent cast, noting strong performances and claustrophobic atmosphere while acknowledging it meanders and may feel padded for some viewers. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/escape-dannemora-review-slow-burn-prison-break-drama-boosted/) - **The Guardian** (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the cinematic quality and stellar cast performances, especially Patricia Arquette's transformative role as the manipulative prison employee, but criticizes the slow-burn pace that makes the prison break story drag at times. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/22/escape-at-dannemora-review-a-big-cinematic-series-with-a-cast-to-match) - **Variety**, Daniel D'Addario (70/100, inferred): Patricia Arquette's committed performance as the resentful and complex Tilly Mitchell stands out and makes the series worth watching despite its punishing length. The critic notes strong direction from Ben Stiller at times but finds the overall story lacks urgent relevance and runs too long. [Read](https://variety.com/2018/tv/reviews/escape-at-dannemora-patricia-arquette-benicio-del-toro-review-1203023525/) - **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (60/100, inferred): The series is an extraordinary prison break story turned humdrum and longer than it needs to be despite astutely observed details. Stellar performances by Arquette, Dano, and del Toro represent some of the actors' best work. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/escape-at-dannemora-showtime-review.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (45/100, inferred): Strong acting from the cast, including Arquette, Del Toro, and Dano, is undermined by pacing problems and unpleasant, unlikable characters that drag through the prison-break narrative. The series takes too long to build and fails to overcome genre constraints despite thorough research. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/escape-at-dannemora-review-1160496/) - **Collider**, Allison Keene (★★★★★): The series is a tense, atmospheric drama that reveals a bizarre true tale through strong performances from its leads. Del Toro, Dano, and especially Arquette deliver standout work in this acting showcase directed by Stiller. [Read](https://collider.com/escape-at-dannemora-review/) - **The Ringer**, Alison Herman (70/100, inferred): The critic sees the limited series as a strong example of Peak TV's ability to tackle modest-scale true stories with movie-star casts and cinematic style, highlighting Patricia Arquette's transformative performance as Tilly Mitchell and Benicio Del Toro's cunning turn as the mastermind. However, the seven-hour length feels slack and stretched, diluting tension in what could have been a tighter reverse-heist narrative. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2018/11/19/tv/escape-at-dannemora-tv-showtime) ## Details - **Created by:** Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin - **Creator:** Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin - **Director:** Ben Stiller - **Writer:** Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin, Jerry Stahl - **Cinematography:** Jessica Lee Gagné - **Music:** Edward Shearmur - **Production design:** Mark Ricker - **Costume design:** David C. Robinson - **Producer:** Lisa M. Rowe, Adam Brightman - **Cast:** Benicio del Toro as Richard Matt; Paul Dano as David Sweat; Patricia Arquette as Joyce 'Tilly' Mitchell; Eric Lange as Lyle Mitchell; David Morse as Gene Palmer; Bonnie Hunt as Catherine Scott; Gregory Dann as Corrections Officer Boyd; Michael Imperioli as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo - **Runtime:** 51m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 18 November 2018 - **Genres:** Drama, Crime - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtV-qWIXD9w ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: add-on, hd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Apple TV: buy, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, IE, IT, MX, NL, NO, PA, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SI, SK, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Le Trou* (1960): Jacques Becker’s Paris cell-block break, done almost in silence and in something like real time. - *A Prophet* (2009), Fi1m 86: Jacques Audiard’s French prison education, where every favour has a price the young man must learn. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-prophet.md) - *Escape from Alcatraz* (1979): Siegel and Eastwood dig out of the Rock with a spoon and no wasted scenes. - *Fargo* (1996), Fi1m 91: Small-town people with small plans and large consequences, and the snow does not care. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/fargo.md) - *Landscapers* (2021), Fi1m 78: A Nottinghamshire couple, a garden, a true crime, and a marriage stranger than the murders. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/landscapers.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. 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