Welcome To Hmp Belmarsh With Ross Kemp

So there I was, a Tuesday night, sofa, remote in hand, ready to zone out. I flicked past the usual reality sludge and landed on a guy with a shaved head and a face like a brick wall. Ross Kemp. And he was walking into HMP Belmarsh. I actually sat up straight. You don’t just casually watch Ross Kemp at Belmarsh; it feels like the TV might bite back.

Welcome to the place they call the British Alcatraz. No, seriously, that’s its nickname. It’s where they send the guys you really don’t want living next door—terrorists, gang leaders, the kind of men who make other hardened criminals nervous. And Kemp, bless him, strolls in like he’s checking into a questionable hostel. You’ve got to admire the sheer brass neck of the man.

The Man, The Myth, The Bulletproof Head

You know Ross Kemp. He played Grant Mitchell in EastEnders. He’s the human equivalent of a concrete bollard. But here’s the thing—he’s not just flexing. He actually listens. He asks the questions you’re thinking but are too polite to shout.

“So, you’ve killed people?” he says, flat as a pancake. The inmate on the other side just nods, like he’s admitting he forgot to take out the bins. This is Kemp’s superpower: he normalises the utterly insane. He makes the monster feel like a bloke. It’s weirdly comforting and deeply unsettling at the same time. (You feel that too, right?)

First Impressions: Less Shawshank, More Call Centre

The first thing that hits you is the noise. Not shouting or violence, but the constant, low-level hum of keys, doors, and human chatter. Kemp walks past rows of cells that look like slightly grim student accommodation. There’s a guy on the phone arguing with his girlfriend. Another one is doing press-ups.

It’s almost boring. That’s the trick, I think. The show wants you to realise that the most dangerous people in the UK spend most of their day just… waiting. Waiting for tea. Waiting for a legal letter. Waiting for their 48 minutes of yard time. The drama is all in their heads. And in the stories Kemp drags out of them.

Welcome to HMP Belmarsh with Ross Kemp (2020)

The A-Wing: Where The Real Fun Stops

Then he goes to the segregation unit. Isolation. The hole. The air changes here. It’s thick. Kemp talks to a man who has been locked in a concrete box for 23 hours a day for years. The guy’s eyes don’t blink enough. He talks about his crime like he’s describing a movie he saw once—detached, cold, slightly fascinated.

Kemp doesn’t flinch. He just leans in. “Are you sorry?” he asks. The pause lasts a full three seconds. “No,” the guy says. You can hear the spit in his voice. This is the core of the show: it doesn’t romanticise prisoners. It shows you the human cost of evil, up close, without the Hollywood glitter. Hard stuff. Good stuff.

The Therapy Sessions (And Why Kemp Cries)

Here’s where I got hit. Kemp doesn’t just interview gangsters. He sits with guys who have psychopathy diagnoses. They talk about emotions like they’re describing a foreign language. One man says he “learned” to cry by watching other people do it. Genuinely chilling. But Kemp’s face… it crumbles a little.

Welcome to HMP Belmarsh with Ross Kemp (2020)

He interviews a man who killed his own mother during a psychotic episode. The guy is on a ward now, medicated, gentle. He plays chess. He weeps. And Ross Kemp—the hard man of British telly—looks like he’s about to sob into his microphone. That’s the real show. Not the violence. The sadness. The complete mess of it all.

The Final Takeaway

So why watch Welcome to HMP Belmarsh? Because it’s not a gawp-fest. It’s not Locked Up Abroad. It’s a quiet, brutal look at the end of the road for extreme criminality. Ross Kemp acts as your dumb, brave friend who goes in so you don’t have to.

He holds the microphone up to the darkness and just lets it talk. By the end, you’re exhausted. But you also understand something about human nature you didn’t before. That men who do monstrous things are still men. And that Belmarsh isn’t just a prison—it’s a mirror. And the reflection is ugly. But Kemp makes you look anyway. Go watch it. Just don’t blame me if you need a cup of tea afterwards.