I (Almost) Got Away with It

This is a fascinating show about fugitives and their attempts to evade capture. The amount of time that the fugitives are on the run vary from several days to several decades. (Subsequently, the episodes about fugitives who evade capture for years are more interesting.) Crimes include murder, burglary, bank robbery, drug dealing, con games, and video piracy.

The re-enactment actors turn in professional, believable performances, and the production values are mostly top-notch. If you watch enough episodes, however, you'll notice a lot of actors and locations are used repeatedly. (e.g. almost every fugitive or fugitives' family members live in the same house.) Other than those obvious budget-friendly shortcuts, the show looks professionally produced.

What makes this show unique is that the actual fugitives are interviewed, so viewers hear a first-person account of events. Particularly interesting is the fugitives' backstories. Most are career criminals who come from dysfunctional families and began offending at a young age. For the episodes featuring a convicted murderer, it's disturbing hearing how easily they rationalize and justify their crimes. Some are remorseful but not all of them. It's also sad to see how a lapse in judgement can change the trajectory of so many lives-from the perpetrators to the victims to the families to innocent bystanders.

INTERESTING FOOTNOTE: In the season-one episode, "Got the Wrong Four People Killed," the actress playing the fugitive's mother is Kathy Garver, who played Cissy in the '60s sitcom Family Affair.

Um, 5.5? WTF? This isn't the greatest thing I've ever seen, but it deserves far better than a 5.5. I mean, seriously, what's wrong with it? I'm giving it a 10 just to counteract some of the bizarre hostile reviews this thing has gotten. Oh, and apparently I have to fill this review with 10 lines of text, so here goes. This is a crime show that contains reenactments of real life criminals who ran from the law. This show does a very good job portraying how the criminals committed their crime(s), how the people associated with them reacted, and how they were eventually caught. The show does a very good job portraying this and DESERVES HIGHER THAN A 5.5 ON THE IMDb SCALE! Thank you.

The first episodes I saw of this series involved failed escape attempts by criminals who had been imprisoned for crimes like robbery and drug distribution. So, the largely unserious tone of the episodes wasn't an issue. But, when I saw that they had episodes for prisoners who were convicted of such horrific crimes as rape and murder (of innocent people, including families.), the tone of these episodes were wildly inappropriate (murders among criminals or gang members would have been right on the line, but still acceptable). There is no justification for a reality series that tries to tell amusing, humanizing stories of criminals who have committed heinous crimes... especially when some 'amusing' failed escape stories involve the criminals abusing, raping, and murdering other inncocent civilians during their escape attempts.

Even for the pathetically low standard that exists for reality television, it still defies belief that someone thought this was a good idea and no one else scuttled it before it became a series.

Let's be clear here - the strong part of this show is not the reenactments, which is most of the show, but the actual person the show is about talking about their crimes. That's interesting.

So you see the reenactment and then the real guy talks about it. I don't know of any other show that does this. It's entertaining and the one really good thing about this show.

What's not is how cheap a lot of the reenactments are. I mean you see the bad guy running with a white hoodie, then a minute later, his hoodie has turned black. Huh?

The cops all wear the same uniform in whatever town they're in but don't even try to make it look real. You see some with half their shirts untucked or no belt or equipment, even just a black shirt. I think they just have two uniforms and get people who fit them - or not - one episode has a super fat guy, hair all over the place, beard and the shirt didn't fit, he's literally arresting a guy with his shirt COMPLETELY UNBUTTONED AND UNTUCKED. This would not happen at any police force nor would they hire a guy who looks like this. At least try and people who look like cops, NOT guys with pony tails, or super overweight or look like stoners. It's annoying. The "Swat team" are all wearing different things. In some instances they're just wearing a button up shirt with a badge attached, not even trying to look real.

A lady is "reading the paper and sees herself on the front page" and the "paper" is the Penny Saver, literally, it doesn't look like a real paper in any way, you can see the ads for cars on the back. You can't get a real paper at least??

I mean there's one room in someone's living room, wood paneled room, that has been a "courtroom" (that one was the worst), a jail cell, numerous offices, a police station, a shoe repair shop, a "secret service" office etc. I think there are one or two "rooms" in someone's house that is used in every episode. It looks like a video some kids would make and passing off the living room as a court room. It's super cheap and annoying.

The same police car is used in every episode (#0302). Whether it took place in 2009 or 1979, it's the same car. Yeah, the story is supposed to be 1979 but here's a 2010 police car in half the shots. At least TRY and look like the period.

You see the bad guy on the highway then a "roadblock" comes up and the "roadblock" on on a residential street (yet they still claim it's the highway). A lot of the cops are the same cops in different cities. I think it's okay to use the same actors in a lot of these which they do (You'll see one guy play the bad guy in one episode and a cop in the next).

There's a Vietnamese gang who killed some people in a robbery, the main guy is on the loose. He goes to his "cousin's" house WHO IS WHITE. He just squints a lot. I kid you not. It's incredibly insulting. There's one scene where a guy is driving and his "teenage" son is in the truck with him. The "teenage" son is at least 25, if not older. I mean you can't even get some producer's kid to play the son???

But really, what they should do is rename this show "Cops are stupid." Because literally every episode, the person is getting away because the cops are morons. They see them in the checkpoint and let them go. They walk past them as they hide behind a tree or behind some boxes. They're constantly letting bad guys go because clearly these are the dumbest cops ever.

If you can get past the super cheapness of the reenactments and some of the bad acting (oddly sometimes they cast someone who looks JUST LIKE the real person and other times they don't look anything like the real person), it's not a bad show.

I know the show isn't in production anymore so there's that but if they ever bring it back, STOP WITH THE SHOTS OF THE REAL CRIMINAL LOOKING OUT A WINDOW every episode.

Pretty good series with exciting fugitive stories, let down by poor execution.

Well narrated, but the acting is lowsy! I mean really bad acting! Ok, I know it's only a documentary but once you notice, it's distracting.

To cement the low budget feel to the programme, every single brand name, car badge etc has been removed. In one episode I laughed out loud when a close up of somebodys (clearly) Nike trainer, where the famous motif had been carelessly covered with black parcel tape which was peeling at one end!

The series is also very repetitive. I don't mean the same stories over and over again, I mean within the episode, where we get updated with where we are in the story. This sort of thing never used to irritate me, but I guess I haven't got the patience anymore for updating me on something I watched less than one minute ago.

With the short-comings aside, it is still a fun series to watch and it covers plenty of details with each case, but do not expect National Geographic standard.