A man who was wrongly convicted for murder has been pelted with pool balls and gets locked in cells as he tours prisons across the world.
For 12 years Raphael Rowe languished in prison for his alleged role in the murder of Alan Eley - who was having sex with a man in a car when he was killed - and the brutal stabbing of a man in his home the following day.
After a huge public campaign, the M25 Three as they were dubbed due to the locations of the attacks were cleared of the charges and released in 2000.
The first things that Raphael, now 54, did was enjoy unlocking a door himself for the first time in over a decade and eating Heinz rather than Happy Shopper baked beans.
After that he began making up for the time he'd missed out on, using the journalism course he'd completed while inside to get himself a job at the BBC and travelling out of South London for the first time in his life.
Raphael has remained passionate about prison reform in the two decades since his release, and has used his platforms with the national broadcaster to fight for those wrongly convicted - including the now acquitted Barry George, formerly sent down for Jill Dando's killing.
Today he is paid to travel the world, visiting the toughest prisons and their hardest inmates to find out what's going right and what's going wrong.
For the most recent series of his Netflix show Inside the World's Toughest Prisons he visits a Soviet era jail in Moldova, where he shares a tiny cell with two murderers serving life sentences.
Moldova has some of the most draconian sentences in the world and has never released anyone who has been given a life sentence - a fact which hangs a large emotional weight around the necks of those locked up there.
"It is evident on the facial expressions," Raphael told The Mirror of the lengthy sentences.
"When I first walked into the cell, the dark rims around maxim's eyes were evident, the pressure of being confined without any light at the end of the tunnel.
"It's the psychological damage that is inflicted on a human being, when you're told you'll be confined in this space. What have they got to lose?"
Raphael set out on his journey to different prisons not to sensationalise the murky world's inside, he says, but to shine a light on the often bleak everyday realities of life behind bars.
During his travels he has come face to face with the boiling tensions that exists among the prison population.
"In Paraguay I had snooker balls thrown at me," he explains.
"In a prison in Lesotho it was demanded that I took a 'wife'. The idea was that they'd (the prisoners) rape me. I made a dash for the door.
"I think the viewers realised that in that environment your life is in such danger."
In the most recent series Raphael finds himself in the cell of crime boss Elvis, who was thrown in Zenica Prison in the aftermath of the Bosnian war.
The convicted arsonist and murderer immediately shows the TV presenter who is in charge, demanding that he take a piece of paper and attempt - in vain - to clean the windows, as the cell mates watch on.
"It was intimidating and horrible, but for me the key was about building the trust and having an honest conversation," Raphael said.
"I was in his zone and his domain. It is about making him feel like he has the power. I hoped he would begin to trust me."
As Elvis warms to Raphael as the two men work in the prisons kitchen, he introduces the visitor to his brother, who was also swept up in a crime wave which surged through the country following the bloody Bosnian war.
Hardened and guilty of quite horrendous crimes as they both are, the reforming rule of prison director Redzo Kahric means both men are free to enter and leave their unlocked cells at will, at any time of the day.
It is these kind of efforts to improve cohesion within the wings and the chances of successful reform that Raphael focuses on in his travels.
He finds perhaps the most striking example of this in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, where the Centra Prisons long reputation for violence and suicide still hangs over it.
Raphael is struck by the environment inside.
Instead of just barbed wire there’s a piano piping out music and serving as a sculpture by tumbling water down onto the arranged blocked below.
Raphael’s cell mate Phaethon, an armed robber, tells him of the brutal events of the past, when he witnessed a prison suicide.
Later the TV presenter is shocked to discover male and female inmates mixing at a bingo session before the Prison Director’s name is chanted by a group of illegal African immigrants who were caught trying to enter the country.
A veteran guard goes on to tell him that the prison is drug free.
While Raphael retains a degree of scepticism about the degree to which a show has been put on for the cameras, he comes away convinced treating prisoners like adults and encouraging their interests is the best chance most have at being reformed.
"Different cultures have different ways of doing things, but what they're doing in Nicosia is humane and based on their cultural existence and the way they treat people in their community," he said.
"I think it does reduce the risk of people being released and committing further offences."
Due to the time he spent inside, and the many prisons he has visited in countries including Honduras, Poland, Belize and Norway, Raphael is perhaps uniquely positioned to argue what could be improved here in the UK.
For him, poor leadership and a lack of purpose are part of the reason why the UK has far higher reoffending rates that many penal systems in Europe.
"We have far more resources than many of these countries (I've visited), but we don't use them in the right way," he continued.
"That is why our recidivism rates are so high.
"The big reveal in the show is every individual we meet has a good side, if only we could cultivate it."
