Gripping, unflinching, no holds barred look at life on the inside. It's not for the faint of heart. Brilliant and intriguing characters. Unfortunately it ended way too soon.Would love them to revive Oz.

Hardest-core crime show ever, an absolute 10/10, an amazing ensemble cast, and a really quality flawless production in every category. Not one for the squeamish, this show does not hold back on sex violence or depravity.

IMDb reviewers are not wrong. Oz is phenomenal. I don't normally review a show until I've watched every minute of it, but Oz is a series that will stand tall in premium television history.This show gets compared a lot to Orange is the New Black because they're two shows centered on penitentiary systems. Where Oz waivers from OitNB is how characters have minor backstories and most of the camera time is spent with the infinite twists and turns. Both shows can be graphic, sexually, violently, with lots of drugs use, but Oz has a focal point on the visceral.This is neither a dark nor an uplifting show. It is as real as a series can get while still being acted. People come in, you get hooked on them, sympathize, and minutes later they're stabbed. A protagonist one minute, a serial offending villain the next. Nobody's ever a hero, even those touted such as the Imam.I'm huge for JK Simmons. He's a mans' man and he defined a comic book character better than the original with his patented Jay Jonah Jameson in Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. And it is almost baffling how the guy we have come to expect on Farmer's commercials is a dominating (as in top) white supremacist who runs the Caucasian unit of Oz's Emerald City. Many familiar faces from other series pepper Oz, a slew of them you'll recognize from House M.D. cameos. Eddie Falco from Nurse Jackie fame is another alum to come from Oz.So if you're in the mood for tension, drama, superb acting, friendly faces, violence and lots of graphic nudity, Oz is a show that you need to dabble with. Scratch that. It's a show that you'll try and immediately bing all weekend.

I can hardly believe I first say this twenty years ago Being English one can only look at an American series and say - o they do it like that do they ? By contrast the English comedy series Porridge described very well the intense boredom of a long sentence in DartmoorI mean it is a drama - the black Muslims as a religion of peace was pretty worn by 1995-2000 when the first tourists were being massacred in Middle Eastern places such as Luxor. Now in 2016 the stock phrases on the lips of the Muslims - "Peace, Brutha, let peace be in your heart and on your lips. God alone will help the Bruthas to Freedom ! " is unintentionally hilarious, given the massacres in France. Twenty years later it is even more incomprehensible how such holy and peaceful men got to prison in the first place....clearly somewhere along the way there had been a lapse in concentration in their practice of their religionWhen in series one the Iman was dying from hypertension and he was abandoned by one of the believers - I was surprised that more was not made of the predestination element - if it was god's will that he die than there was nothing the second man could do about it. Predestination is strong in Islam - God foresees everything and wills it. So whoever it was who was ostracised could have made a good case for being praised.Nothing is made at all from God's word is definitely in Arabic and so to understand it - you have to learn Arabic. A good Muslim does not of course read translations .....so Hollywood comes to Mecca is seen to be more of a social construct for American film makers.... Mecca's brush will La-La land is nothing more than a dramatic twist in a plot.