Sky One poaches Prison Break from Five
Sky One has poached the critically acclaimed US drama Prison Break from terrestrial broadcaster Five.
The show, about a man who escapes death row, is one of Five's biggest hits, attracting two million viewers.
It joins 24 and Lost among programmes which Sky snapped up after they established an audience elsewhere.
"The edge of the seat drama is the perfect addition to our must-see slate of US programming," said the channel's head of acquisitions, David Smyth.
A spokesperson for Five shrugged off the loss, saying: "In the light of Prison Break's declining ratings we didn't think season three represented good value for money."
She added that the drama's share of the TV audience had fallen from 9.2% during the first series to 8.5% for more recent episodes.
The decline in viewing figures is unlikely to be halted by the move to Sky.
When the third series of Lost transferred to Sky One last year from Channel 4, the show's audience halved.
The season premiere peaked with 1.4m viewers, compared with the 2.8m who tuned in to Channel 4 for the last episode of series two.
Prison Break stars Dominic Purcell as Lincoln Burrows, a man wrongly convicted of assassinating the US vice-president's brother.
He spends the first series planning his jail break, aided by his brother - who gets sent to the same prison with an intricate tattoo of the compound's blueprint covering his upper body.
The second series follows the escaped convicts as they try to evade the authorities.
Season three is currently in production, and is due to be shown on the Fox network in the US later this year. Sky said it will pick up the show from the third series in the autumn.
