7 Reasons Why Oz Was The Most Groundbreaking TV Show Ever
How HBO’s bloodthirsty prison drama paved the way for the golden age of TV.
Life's not a word. It's a sentence.
Welcome to the Emerald City. A land where the worst of the worst sleep with one eye open and death is a breath away. It’s kill or be killed no matter who you are or where you are.
Seriously, not even folks on the outside were safe from the prisoners in this show.
Oz was the first of its kind when it arrived in 1997. A relentlessly grim portrait of life in a maximum security prison where happy endings are but figments of the inmates’ imaginations. Penned by ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ creator Tom Fontana, the show shocked critics and audiences alike, going against every convention of television at the time.
Hard to watch yet impossible to look away from, Oz remains a major influence on television to this day thanks to a variety of themes, deaths, character arcs and week to week unpredictability like nothing else out there.
Let’s take a look at how Oz blew the roof off what a TV show can be and inspired 20+ years of small screen greatness in its wake.
7. First Of Its Kind
Oz was the very first hour long drama produced by HBO. You know HBO, that mega network behind The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Sex and the City, Game of Thrones, Westworld and so on and so forth.
HBO was delving into more and more original content as the '90s rolled in. Tales From The Crypt, The Larry Sanders Show and Dream On among others had been positively received by critics and audiences alike. With Oz however, HBO showed the perks of being a subscription only service by allowing a vast array of more adult themes to the surface. Due to not carrying standard commercials like broadcast television would, HBO was able to provide audiences with far edgier content. This in turn perked up viewer interest worldwide both in HBO itself and in what a TV show could be moving forward.
Oz’s success with critics and audiences was enough of a confidence boost for HBO to greenlight The Sopranos, and the rest is history. Had Oz flopped back in ‘97, we may have missed out on everything from gangsters to Bernarnold to that final season of GOT everyone just loved so, so much...