The Great Escape

Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette stars in the true story of an infamous prison breakout.

In June 2015, two murderers escaped from a maximum security prison in New York state with the aid of a married female employee who was sleeping with both of them. Now, the story is the basis of Sky Atlantic’s eight-part gritty drama Escape at Dannemora, starring Oscar-winners Patricia Arquette and Benicio Del Toro.

Arquette, who won an Oscar for her role in the 2014 coming-of-age drama Boyhood, plays Joyce ‘Tilly’ Mitchell, supervisor of the prison’s tailor shop where the inmates work, who gets entangled in the two men’s escape plans.

TRANSFORMATION Arquette, 50, is almost unrecognisable as the dowdy, whining Tilly. Dissatisfied and bored with her devoted husband, Lyle (Narcos’ Eric Lange), who also works at the prison, Tilly regularly has backroom trysts with convicted killer David Sweat (War & Peace’s Paul Dano).