Read an oral history of HBO’s Oz

Esquire

Tom Fontana’s prison show that “changed TV forever” launched 20 years ago this summer. “We were really in uncharted territory, because HBO had never done a drama series before,” Fontana. Adds Christopher Meloni: “It was brutality combined with poetry. Harold Perrineau was the Greek chorus, the grand observer of these silly games that humankind plays. I thought that was a cool way to present a show that also had inmate rape and all that other brutal stuff. There was nothing like it on TV.”