HBO’s 6-Season Thriller Masterpiece Is Everything Prison Break Should Have Been
Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel.
While Prison Break may be the first show to come to mind when you think of a prison-themed TV series, the six-season thriller masterpiece on HBO is the true penal heavyweight. Prison Break premiered on Fox in 2005 and ended up running for three more seasons before seemingly concluding with a TV movie in 2009, The Final Break.
Then in 2017, Prison Break returned for one last season, set years after the end of the film. The first season of Prison Break was brilliant, with the entire show focused on brothers Lincoln Burrows' (Dominic Purcell) and Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) attempt to escape from a maximum-security prison.
Once they escape, though, the series takes a bit of a dip. It manages to squeeze all it can out of retreading similar storylines, and remains fairly strong throughout its run, but no season matches the first. If you're looking for a prison show that does remain compelling all through its six seasons, look no further than Oz.
Oz is the first successful prestige drama HBO ever had. Before The Sopranos, there was the brutal prison drama that premiered in 1997 and ran until 2008. The show is set in the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison that offers an experimental rehabilitation program.
Within the walls of the prison is another prison, nicknamed "The Emerald City", a controlled environment with a carefully balanced ratio of inmates taken from the various racial and social groups that make up the prison. This attempt to ease tensions instead creates a violent, brutal microcosm of the wider prison system, and also makes for a fantastic drama series.
HBO’s Oz Is The Ultimate Prison-Based TV Thriller
HBO's Oz is probably the best show set in a prison that you're going to find. This is partially due to there not being a whole lot of prison-set drama shows, but still, take your wins where you can. Even without comparing it to other prison series, Oz stands out as an engrossing, shocking, well-acted tale of guilt and circumstances.
Those Wizard of Oz references are apt, because Oz oftentimes feels like a fantasy show. The conceit of a place like "The Emerald City" is actually absurd the more you think about it, and the abuse, sexual assault, and shame every character is forced to suffer is so over the top that it feels more like a theatrical play than a down-to-earth drama.
Though it may be ridiculous at times, with every single horrible trope and stereotype about prison reapplied again and again, Oz is still a fascinating portrait. It's a wildly unique series, from the characters it attempts to humanize, to its wrap-around storylines, to its unrelenting viscerality.
Oz Succeeded Where Fox’s Prison Break Failed
Oz got to the core of the prison system of America in a way that Prison Break never did. That's not to say that Oz is a realistic depiction of prison. It's more like a nightmare, Shakespearean version, but the isolation, fear, and anxiety of the show are certainly closer to the truth than the adventure thrills of Prison Break.
While Oz may be absurd, purposefully so, in many ways, you're never brought out of the show in the same way you are in Prison Break. When something outlandish happens in Oz, it usually makes sense within the scene of the show. Too often, in Prison Break, the actual rules the series lays out are broken in order to solve tricky storytelling knots.
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