Oz

Tom Fontana's prison drama is set inside Oswald State Correctional Facility, where an experimental unit known as Emerald City tries to make rehabilitation work alongside the daily business of confinement. Visibility is supposed to help. In practice, it means everybody can see who is vulnerable, who is useful and who has offended the wrong person.

Lee Tergesen plays new arrival Tobias Beecher, with J. K. Simmons as Vern Schillinger and Eamonn Walker as Kareem Saïd. Harold Perrineau, as Augustus Hill, gives the series its distinctive direct-address narration.

I rate Oz very highly. Its intensity and ensemble contain early signs of the institutional drama I love in The Wire, although Oz is more theatrical and far more confined. It is harsh, sometimes excessive and never easy company. The characters make it worth the discomfort.

The original series runs for six seasons. Read my full Oz review.