Doing Time on AllMovie

Doing Time is the American title for the British-made Porridge. Based on a popular TV sitcom, the film stars Ronnie Barker as the unofficial leader of a group of cut-up inmates in Slade Prison. These lovable lawbreakers engineer the escape of a timorous first offender who has been railroaded into a long sentence. Barker accidentally winds up "outside" with the escapee--and spends the rest of the film struggling to break back into jail. British fans of Porridge weren't happy with this film version, citing attenuated material and repetition as its chief shortcomings. For the record, Porridge was the basis for a brief American sitcom titled On the Rocks, which ran (not without resistance from the National Association for Justice) from September 1975 to May 1976.