OZ on HBO

"Oz" is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a fictional maximum-security prison (level 4). Many of the plot arcs are set in "Emerald City" ("Em City"), an experimental unit of the prison in which the unit manager, Tim McManus, attempts to emphasize rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration, as opposed to pure punishment. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment in which there is a controlled number of members of each racial and social group, with the hope of easing tensions among these various groups. The show was taped in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Under McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, the inmates in Em City all struggle to fulfill their own needs. Some fight for power; either power over the drug trade or power over the other inmate factions. Others want money, either through slinging 'tits' (drugs), gambling or other scams. Others, corrections officers and inmates alike, simply want to survive long enough to make parole or even to see tomorrow. The show gives a no-holds-barred account of prison life with all the plots, subplots and conflicts given context and explanation by the show's wheelchair-using narrator, Augustus Hill.

Oz chronicles the attempts of McManus (Terry Kinney) to keep control over the inmates of Em(erald) City as well as the drug trade and the violence. There have been many groups of inmates during the run of the show and not everybody makes it out alive. There are the gangsters (Adebisi, Wangler, Redding, Poet, Keene, Supreme Allah), Muslims (Said, Arif, Hamid Khan), Italians (Pancamo, Nappa, Schiebetta), bikers (Hoyt), Aryans (Schillinger, Robson, Mark Mack), Christians (Cloutier, Cudney), Latinos (Alvarez, Morales, Guerra, Hernandez), gays (Hanlon, Cramer) and a number of others. (the O'Riley brothers, Keller, Stanislovsky, etc.). In contrast to the dangerous criminals, recurring character Tobias Beecher gives a good look at a normal man who made one tragic mistake. The episodes are narrated and held together by inmate Augustus Hill, who provides the show with some context, some sense of theme, etc.

Eric Roberts, Method Man, Luke Perry, Master P, Treach, Evan Seinfeld, Rick Fox and Peter Criss have made guest appearances on the show.

The large ensemble cast included Christopher Meloni, Ernie Hudson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Harold Perrineau Jr., Eamonn Walker, Rita Moreno, John Lurie, Terry Kinney, Betty Buckley, Kathryn Erbe, Lee Tergesen, B. D. Wong, J. K. Simmons, Dean Winters, Scott William Winters, Kirk Acevedo, Erik King, David Zayas, Lauren Vélez, and Edie Falco.