What's left of the victim is described as looking like a "burnt chicken" by an inmate named Groves (Sean Whitesell), who is in Emerald City for having killed his parents and then eaten them. It looks soft, blue and warm as it slowly falls. Viewers see the match descending from the victim's point of view. In the second episode, which premieres July 14, a prisoner who has been beaten, drugged and strapped to a gurney by prison authorities is doused with lighter fluid and set on fire by one of his rival inmates. As the Nazi sits astride the lawyer methodically heating his branding tool with a lighter, he hums a Brahms lullaby.īut that is only Fontana-the-storyteller warming up. Things like the lawyer being branded with a swastika on his buttocks by his new cellmate, a sadistic white supremacist (JK Simmons).
Land of oz tv series series#
You will see things Saturday night in "Oz" that you will not see anywhere else on television - not on "NYPD Blue" or "Homicide," for all the critics' talk about how "gritty" and "realistic" those series are. Think Dorothy without the dog.īut the people he meets and the horror he finds are so grotesque, he is quickly overwhelmed. Tergesen is our point of entry, someone middle-class viewers can identify with and use as a reference in this strange land as he learns the prison routine. "Oz" opens with a white attorney (Lee Tergesen) arriving at the prison after being convicted of killing a young girl while driving drunk. The pilot of "Oz" is simply a brilliant piece of television storytelling. It's the in-your-face intensity, graphic subject matter, anger, rage, sadism, fear and the way Fontana burns it all into your brain until you feel as if you have just spent an hour in hell.Īnd, as unsettling as that hour is, you'll want to go back and see more. Directors for the eight episodes airing this year range from Darnell Martin ("I Like It Like That") and Alan Taylor ("Palookaville") to Jean de Segonzac ("Homicide").īut as strong as they are, it is neither the acting nor the direction that is going to have viewers buzzing. Other key players include: Leon ("Waiting to Exhale"), Ernie Hudson ("Ghostbusters"), Harold Perrineau ("Smoke") and Eamonn Walker ("Shopping"). Butterfly" Tony Musante, from "Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune" and Rita Moreno, who has won not only a Tony but an Emmy, Oscar and Grammy as well.
The large ensemble cast of "Oz" includes a number of actors who carry big-time stage credentials: Terry Kinney, one of the founders of the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre repertory company B. As the pilot reveals in the very first minutes, violence is sudden and death can happen any time.
It is the first weekly drama series in HBO's 25-year history, and, in terms of quality, adult drama, it is the television event of the summer.Įmerald City is a clean, modern, well-lighted place with panes of Plexiglas instead of iron bars, and an idealistic administrator who seems genuinely interested in rehabilitation of the prisoners. "Oz" is a drama series about life inside the fictional Oswald Maximum Security Prison, specifically, an experimental unit of it called Emerald City.
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