Intoxicating, intelligent "Prison Break" is escape we need

Fox's "Prison Break" is a dandy way to ease us into fall. It's smart, atmospheric and intoxicating — the big thriller the movies forgot to make, with the added pleasure of a slow build.

The only catch is that you must watch every week. The series gets a two-hour debut at 8 tonight and will regularly air at 9 p.m. Mondays. It's Fox's attempt to establish a few shows with viewers before baseball playoffs interrupt.

To that end, "Prison Break" is a serialized drama in the style of "24." Forget one-episode police procedurals; creator Paul Scheuring yanks us by the lapels into a landscape of complex plotting and tantalizing iconography filled with mathematical formulae, origami ducks, the Taj Mahal and even D.B. Cooper.

The show has a pulse-racing setup. Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) is standing in a tattoo parlor with his back to the camera. The tattoo artist sees what we can't and admires her work. "Most guys for the first one, they start with something small ... not you."

In the next three minutes, Scofield tries to stick up a bank and instead gets sentenced for armed robbery to Fox River State Penitentiary in Joliet, Ill., despite the protests of his attorney and old family friend, Veronica Donovan (Robin Tunney).

But it's perfect for Scofield. He wants to spring his brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), who's on death row at Fox River and only three months away from a lethal injection for killing the brother of the vice president of the United States.

"Prison Break" isn't a series that plays coy by hiding the less important cards or fritters away its suspense on false climaxes. Scofield's plan is in full view of the audience. The deliciousness for us is how he will carry it out.

While not going the full "Oz" route, the series has boiled down prison life to a few tense, scary dynamics that serve the story. Scofield first must win over both an incarcerated mobster (Peter Stormare) and the prison's Warden Pope (Stacy Keach).

Here is where "Prison Break" displays an inventive playfulness that helps us forgive some of the plot's weaknesses.

For example, Scofield lets the mobster know he has information regarding the whereabouts of one Fibonacci, the man that put the mobster in prison.

Scofield does this is by writing on pieces of paper that he then folds into origami ducks and drops through gratings into the prison drainage system. They float down to the basement laundry detail, where the mobster's informants find them.

The joke is in the overhead camera shots of the rectangular drain grate and the origami ducks swirling downward — a sly reference to the real-life Fibonacci, the mathematician that devised formulations for the perfect "Golden Mean" rectangle and its accompanying inner spiral.

That makes sense, since our hero turns out to be a structural engineer (possibly the first ever as lead character in a television series). But a spiral is also a pretty good metaphor for a series with more in mind than a jailhouse bust.

We're persuaded that Lincoln Burrows is the innocent victim of a frame-up after Secret Service agents try to change the mind of an influential Roman Catholic bishop opposed to Burrows' death penalty. When the bishop won't back down, the shocking results hint at a conspiracy concerning the highest office in the land.

That, of course, is where "24" has comfortably dwelled for the past several seasons. Yet I think "Prison Break" is more promising because it engages viewers on a number of levels and offers more variance in tone and mood.

Not everything is grim business. Scofield's voluble cell mate Sucre (Amaury Nolasco) seeks coaching to conduct a long-distance romance. Warden Pope needs Scofield's help to build a model of the Taj Mahal for his wife. A prison-yard oddball (Muse Watson) wearing a beret and carrying a cat may or may not be legendary skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

Back stories also build out the characters and give the plot additional places to go, such as the accelerating troubles of teenager LJ (Marshall Allman), who is Scofield's nephew and Burrows' estranged son.

The performances in "Prison Break" are superb. The general level of talent is high, and co-executive producer and director Brett Ratner has established an understated acting style in the most effective tradition of thrillers.

Other values are top-notch as well. The production's modern noir feel is kept intact through shadowy lighting, somber colors and a virtually all-brunet cast. Exterior scenes are shot at the old Joliet Prison, which was built in 1852 and has a preternatural foreboding that can't be faked. Photography is superb.

I've said "Prison Break" has some plotting flaws. It's hard to believe the judge sentencing Scofield doesn't know or mention that she's putting him in the same prison as his brother. And, for a career professional, Scofield assimilates awfully fast into convict life.

Still, these are minor quibbles compared to the payoffs. "Prison Break" looks to be the perfect cure for summertime blahs — a great escape about a great escape.

Viewer alert: The preceding rave does not include tonight's second hour of "Prison Break," which arrived too late for review.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com