Oz is primarily narrated by inmate Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau, Jr.), former drug dealer, convicted murderer, and former drug addict. Simmons, Dean Winters, Scott William Winters, Kirk Acevedo, Erik King, Evan Seinfeld, David Zayas, Lauren Vélez, and Edie Falco.Įric Roberts, Joyce Van Patten, Method Man, Luke Perry, Master P, Treach, LL Cool J, Rick Fox, Dana Ivey and Peter Criss have made appearances on the show.
The 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. The episodes are narrated and held together by inmate Augustus Hill, who provides the show with some context, some sense of humor, etc. In contrast to the dangerous criminals, regular character Tobias Beecher gives a look at a normal man who made one fatal drunk-driving mistake. There are the African American Homeboys (Adebisi, Wangler, Redding, Poet, Keene, Supreme Allah) and Muslims (Said, Arif, Hamid Khan), the Wiseguys (Pancamo, Nappa, Schibetta), the Aryans (Schillinger, Robson, Mark Mack), the Latinos (Alvarez, Morales, Guerra, Hernandez), the Irish (the O'Reily brothers), the gays (Hanlon, Cramer), the bikers (Hoyt), and a number of others (Rebadow, Keller, Stanislofsky). There are many groups of inmates during the run of the show and not everybody within each group makes it out alive. Oz chronicles the attempts of McManus to keep control over the inmates of Em City. 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. In particular the prisoners want to make parole or even to see tomorrow. Others, corrections officers and inmates alike, simply want to survive long enough. Some fight for power either power over the drug trade or power over the other inmate factions. Under McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, the inmates in Em City all struggle to fulfill their own needs.
Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment in which there is a carefully managed number of members of each racial and social group, with the hope of easing tensions among these various groups. In this experimental unit of the prison, unit manager Tim McManus attempts to emphasize rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration, as opposed to pure punishment. Many of the plot arcs are set in "Emerald City" ("Em City"), also a concept from The Wizard of Oz. In contrast, the series has used the tagline: "It's no place like home". The nickname is a reference to the classic film Wizard of Oz, which is notable for popularizing the phrase: "There's no place like home". "Oz" is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a fictional maximum-security prison ( level 4). The show was filmed in New York City, New York and later Bayonne, New Jersey. The series finale aired February 23, 2003. Oz premiered on Jand ran for six seasons. It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes (and received the actual OZ tattoo that was filmed for the credits).