Welcome to OZ

OZ, which premiered in 1997 and ran for six reasons, is widely believed to be the first US-American television drama to take place almost entirely inside a prison. Set inside an experimental rehabilitation unit called Emerald City (Em’ City for short), which is in turn housed in the fictional maximum-security prison Oswald State Penitentiary, OZ follows the ambiguous moral careers, shuffling alliances, and violent activities of its diverse, ensemble cast of prison staff and prisoners as they organize themselves into ethnic gangs and vie for power within the confines of the unit. OZ has been described as “a testosterone-driven soap opera for guys” (Axmaker) which works hard to push the envelope in terms of graphic televisual content. The result is a series which has won praise for its gritty “realism” and for tackling previously taboo topics such as homosexuality and drug addiction just as often as it received harsh criticism for its exaggerated and excessive deployment of violence.

OZ holds a special, if contested, place in TV lore; the series is often hailed as an influential forerunner for the contemporary “quality” TV drama. Allen Sepinwall has called OZ “the first revolutionary cable drama of the period” and hailed it as “the foundation for everything that followed” (Sepinwall 19).