Managed by a true prison reform zealot, Tim McManus, Em City is for many prisoners the only hope in their lives. He gets assigned to 'Em' City (Emerald City), an experimental unit in Oz the goal of Em City is to try a different living environment, one that might give the prisoners a chance at changing their lives and possibly rehabilitate them. Everything that you could imagine happening in a prison setting happens, and probably a lot you wouldn't imagine. His journey through Oz is basically the rest of the series, and it's certainly no yellow brick road he follows. Because Beecher is a lawyer, the court decides to make an example of him and sends him to maximum security at Oswald Penitentiary. Beecher has committed vehicular manslaughter while driving drunk. At the end of almost every episode you'll probably find yourself muttering 'This is SUCH a good show!' Although it is ostensibly the story of a prison and its many prisoners, 'Oz' can be viewed as primarily the story of one man, Tobias Beecher. The stories are both filled with detail and minutiae, and also have overarching moral tales and 'big picture' flow. It's also wildly creative, beautifully filmed, brilliantly acted (with very few exceptions) and has a great framing device.

OK, it's violent and bloody and vicious and cruel. and ties everything together really nicely. The whole thing is narrated and held together by inmates Augustus Hill, who provides the show with some context, some sense of theme, etc. Nathan), a nun/psychologist (Sister Peter Marie), a bunch of guards some honest, some crooked and of course the warden Leo Glynn.

Besides the regular inmates, there's guest stars such as Method Man, Luke Perry, Master P, Treach, etc. And there's a great 'everyman' character called Beecher who gives a good look at a normal man who made one tragic mistake. There's the gangstas (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 whole pile of others (the O'Riley brothers, Keller, Stanislovsky, etc.). There have been many groups of inmates during the run of the show and not everybody makes it out alive. 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.

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