Netflix released all six episodes of its new reality series The New Stanford Prison Experiment on Wednesday. It puts 30 volunteers in a closed-off section of a real county jail in Canton, Georgia, for up to two weeks. Eight are guards, three of them women, and 22 are prisoners, all men. Everyone gets a safe word, "pineapple," and psychologists are on call around the clock. The show is based on Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo's 1971 study, which put 24 male college students in a mock prison in a Stanford basement. Zimbardo stopped it after six days. Netflix drew backlash as soon as it announced the series in September. The reviews are in now, and critics are fighting over whether there's anything real to learn from it.

Netflix Made a Reality Show and Called It Science (Jack Seale, Kelly Lawler, Robert Lloyd)

These critics say the show is ordinary reality TV, and it teaches viewers nothing new.

Nobody on the show forgets they're on TV. Guardian TV critic Jack Seale says the series "pretends to be science. It isn't – it's patronising reality television." "None of it is real, and nobody thinks it is," Seale wrote. Seale notes that more than one participant just walks off.

It's just another reality show, in jumpsuits. USA Today TV critic Kelly Lawler says the show "is no different than 'The Traitors' in prison jumpsuits" and "doesn't discover anything new or revelatory." "Reality TV may yet sink lower, but 'Prison' feels like we're at the bottom," Lawler wrote.

It only tells you what you already knew. Los Angeles Times TV critic Robert Lloyd is milder. Lloyd says the show's four planned phases liven it up and its ending "does make for a nice arc," but that it "doesn't offer any grand theory of human behavior, only what you knew already, that everyone is different."

But It Still Shows What Prison Does to People (Jared Richards, Bob Strauss, Jane Lipsitz)

Two critics say the episodes reveal something real about power and prison, and the show's producer says this isn't Zimbardo's experiment.

The idea is repellent, but the show still turned out thought-provoking. Sydney Morning Herald critic Jared Richards wrote, "From the outset, I found Netflix's version repellant." After all six episodes, Richards called it "one of the most confronting, thought-provoking reality shows I've watched in a long time." Richards says it shows how the US prison system pushes both guards and prisoners toward their worst selves. One formerly incarcerated participant says, "This is turning me back into the f---ing person I used to be."

The people on it learn something real. San Francisco Chronicle critic Bob Strauss gave the show two stars and wrote that it "may seem trivial" next to the original. "Yet worthwhile insights, about both individuals and institutions, are achieved," Strauss wrote. The women guards mostly kept control better than the men did, according to Strauss.

The producers say this is a different experiment. Executive producer Jane Lipsitz told the Stanford Daily, "There was a lot of outrage that anyone would even attempt the Stanford Prison Experiment again — and given what happened with the original, I completely understand that reaction." "If we were simply recreating the original experiment, that would be unconscionable," Lipsitz said. "But this is a different time, with different participants, different safeguards, and ultimately, a very different journey."

And the 1971 Study Behind It Was Bad Science (Thibault Le Texier, Stephen Reicher, Clay Ramsay)

Two researchers say the 1971 study never proved what it claimed, and a man who was a prisoner in it worries Netflix will sell the reboot as science.

The 1971 study wasn't real science either. French historian Thibault Le Texier dug through the study's recordings and transcripts at Stanford and published "Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment" in 2019. "It was more theater than science," Le Texier told CNN. Recordings and later interviews show Zimbardo coached the guards and kept some prisoners from leaving when they first asked. Zimbardo died in 2024.

Its famous lesson does real harm. University of St Andrews psychology professor Stephen Reicher co-designed a 2002 BBC version of the study. The guards in that version didn't become tyrannical. Reicher says Zimbardo's claim that bad situations make good people do evil "gives perpetrators an out" and calls it "socially and morally dangerous."

A 1971 prisoner called it a "bad idea." Clay Ramsay was Prisoner 416 in the original study. Ramsay told Newsweek in September that the series was a "Bad idea." "I'm afraid they're going to pretend that this has some kind of scientific value," Ramsay said, calling that "the problem with the whole thing from the very start."

Where This Lands

Seale and Lawler say Netflix made an ordinary reality show and called it an experiment. Lloyd says it has a nice arc but teaches nothing new. Richards and Strauss say the episodes reveal real things about power and about prison. Lipsitz says the safeguards make this a different project from Zimbardo's. Le Texier and Reicher say the 1971 study's famous conclusion doesn't hold up. Ramsay worries viewers will treat the reboot as science.

Sources