Produced by Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam, it presents the findings of what has subsequently become known as the BBC Prison Study.

The genesis of the programme was the 1971 Stanford prison experiment carried out by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University, in which a group of students were recruited to perform the roles of 'prisoner' and 'guard' as a psychological experiment to test how human beings conform to roles.

That study was brought to a premature end as a result of the extreme brutality displayed by guards towards prisoners.

The BBC Experiment was led by psychologists Professor Alex Haslam (University of Queensland) and Professor Steve Reicher (University of St Andrews) who planned and designed the psychological experiment with the series' executive producer Nick Mirsky and producer Gaby Koppel of the BBC.

This approval was conditional on the BBC putting in place a range of safeguards to protect against psychological damage to the participants.

The first test begins when the prisoners are informed by the "experimenters" over intercom that they have the chance to be promoted to guard status.

At breakfast the second day, the guards attempt to relieve their guilt, by offering one of the most valuable resources to the prisoners, food.

After the third day, the prisoners accepted their position, uniting them as a group and allowing them to overthrow the guards.

There are two distinct groups in the series, "prisoner" and "guard", each striving to achieve their own goals through collective self-realization.

As we saw when the Prisoners first confronted the Guards and later when the Commune was established, the success of groups in bringing about social change is uplifting for their members.

The series courted controversy, and was criticised by Philip Zimbardo who said that his original experiment did not need repeating.

He also claimed that The Experiment was simply reality television and that it had no scientific base or value, as participants would be playing for the cameras and not acting "normally".

[4] In turn, Haslam and Reicher have responded that their goal was not to replicate the Stanford study, but rather to expose limitations in Zimbardo's own theorizing and method.

This prediction was derived from social identity theory,[5] and the study incorporated manipulations designed to test some of its core hypotheses.

Zimbardo also criticised the lack of external validity of the findings of the BBC study, since prisoner domination of guards is not observed "anywhere in the known universe".

[4] Haslam and Reicher have countered that the purpose of their study was to demonstrate the theoretical possibility of resistance, noting that this is a feature of most social systems in which tyranny prevails (e.g., as argued by Michel Foucault).

They also observe that the imprisonment of leaders is often important for the development of resistance movements and for processes of social change.

In 2001, a major report by the US-based group Human Rights Watch also concluded that cases of prison authorities ceding control to inmates was "an all too common occurrence".

Confounding initial criticism, findings of the BBC study were reported in scientific papers that were published in leading peer-reviewed journals.

Indeed, it is possible that the study has formed the basis for more academic papers than any other single field experiment in psychology.

Reflecting its contribution to ongoing debate in this area, in 2007 the BBC Prison study was included in the OCR examination board's Psychology A-level syllabus.

The four episodes dealt sequentially with each of the main phases of the study: Conflict, Order, Rebellion and Tyranny.

Other persons involved in the making of this production include clinical psychologists: Andrew Eagle and Scott Galloway.

An independent ethics panel composed of: Lembit Öpik, MP for Montgomeryshire (Chair), Dr Mark McDermott (Senior Lecturer in Psychology), University of East London, Dr. Stephen Smith (Co-founder Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre), Steve Taylor (Council member Howard League for Penal Reform), Andrea Wills, (Chief advisor and BBC Editorial Policy Unit)).

A team of research advisors were also used in the process, members included: Andrew Livingstone, Brian Young, David Corner, Denis Sindic, Eva Loth, Fabio Sani, Grant Muir, Lloyd Carson, Nick Hopkins, Huw Williams, Inma Adavares-Yorno, Jolanda Jetten, Lucy O’Sullivan, Mike Howe, Paul Webley, Stephanie Sonnenberg, Stephen Wilks, and Tom Postmes.