Oz (TV series)
American prison drama television series
Oz is an American prison drama television series created, co-executive produced, and principally written by Tom Fontana. Set at a fictional men's prison, it was the first one-hour dramatic television series produced by the premium cable network HBO. Oz ran for six seasons, from its premiere on July 12, 1997, to its series finale on February 23, 2003.
Overview
"Oz" is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a fictional level 4 maximum-security state prison in an unspecified East Coast state, although references throughout the series point to New York as its location. The nickname "Oz" also refers to L. Frank Baum's fictional Land of Oz. Most of the series' story arcs are set in "Emerald City", a wing of the prison that is named after a fantastic place in the Oz books.
Plot
In an experimental unit of the prison, unit manager Tim McManus emphasizes rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration, rather than carrying out purely punitive measures. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment, with a carefully managed balance of members from each racial and social group, intended to ease tensions among these various factions. However, almost all of these factions are constantly at war with one another which often results in many prisoners being beaten, raped, or murdered.
Under McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, all inmates in "Em City" struggle to fulfill their own needs. Some fight for power – either over the drug trade or over other inmate factions and individuals.
The public source identifies “Oz (TV series)” as american prison drama television series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around series, American and prison.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oz (TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.