I love the start of a new series of Prison Break. It’s one of my favourite shows and there’s the expectation that it will be the best series ever. Sadly for last night’s Prison Break series four opener, the air of excitement soon turned sour for me, curdling the milk of my expectation. But why?

The opening sequence saw Michael in LA, hatching a plot to kill evil Company agent Gretchen and avenge the death of his beloved Sara (she was beheaded at the start of series three, or so we thought). Michael confronted Whistler and Gretchen while they stole a valuable memory card for the Company. With a gun pointed at her head, Gretchen revealed that Sara was not dead and had in fact escaped. The head in the box, which Lincoln saw, was that of a random dead woman. Surely Linc should have checked before telling poor old Michael that the ‘only woman he’d ever loved’ was a goner? Just my thoughts.

In a nutshell, Michael was reunited with Sara, got arrested and was asked to help take down the Company in return for immunity. Meanwhile, in a series of ridiculously neat plot twists, Lincoln was arrested in Panama and shipped back to the US, Sona burnt down and the inmates including Bellick and Sucre fled to the US but were also arrested.

The whole gang were handily reunited in order to defeat the Company by getting hold of an information card called Scylla. It was all very silly and borroweds heavily on Alias (remeber that?) with the new tech guy and some of the gadgets.

I almost forgot to mention the new Company hitman who looks suspiciously like Chef from Southpark, but is much less jovial. By the end of the feature-length episode, he’d captured Gretchin, killed Whistler and Mahone’s wife and child and was hot on the trail of Linc and Michael.

Other things that cannot go unmentioned include T-bag’s woeful retching after eating his coyote buddy and someone asking him if he had ‘had a bad Mexican’, Michael getting his tattoos removed (presumably to save on make-up costs) and the least amount of onscreen chemistry ever seen between Sara and Michael in their rather awkward kiss. The very beautiful Wentworth Miller commented on life after PB: “As far as post-Prison Break, I’d love to be involved in like a romantic comedy or something, really change it up if possible”. Only if you learn to do a convincing screen kiss, my dear.

I will continue watching, and I think you always need to give US dramas at least five episodes before deciding if they’re worth the time and effort. Let’s hope the search for Scylla is fruitful and the new-skinned Michael bares a bit more than his soul.

[Written by Victoria Cooper]