Oz - hell behind bars
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Oz - hell behind bars |
| Original title | Oz |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Year (s) | 1997-2003 |
| length | 55 minutes |
| Episodes | 56 in 6 seasons ( list ) |
| genre | Drama , thriller |
| idea | Tom Fontana |
| First broadcast | July 12, 1997 (USA) on HBO |
| German-language first broadcast |
March 24, 2014 on Sky Atlantic HD |
Oz: Hell Behind Bars is an American television series that aired in six seasons on HBO between 1997 and 2003 . The series was written by Tom Fontana and is about life in a maximum security prison.
It is considered the first of the " Quality TV " series from HBO. The German-language premiere broadcast of the Pay TV transmitter Sky Atlantic on March 24, 2014 to June 11, 2014.
content
fable
The title of the series refers to the high-security prison Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary located in an unnamed state in the USA or, after renaming, Oswald Maximum Security Correctional Facility: Level Four .
In this prison, Tim McManus heads an experimental department called Emerald City under the prison director Leo Glynn , which is supposed to serve a rehabilitation idea more than the normal prison. This goal is pursued through a mixture of strong supervision and individual accountability. The inmates are made up of groups of Italians, Irish, the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood , Afro-American gang members, Muslims, Latinos and gays, as well as a heterogeneous group of "others".
A narrator can be seen at the beginning of each episode and with different regular overlays. Augustus Hill, inmate of the institution, African American and wheelchair user serves as such. In the sense of a theater choir, his words do not serve to convey the plot, but are moral and philosophical comments that function as a bridge to fundamental social issues. The choir scenes are mostly visually lifted out of the otherwise realistic appearance of the series.
concept
Fontana started Oz as a series that portrays prison as brutal, inhuman and chaotic. His primary intention was not to entertain the audience, but to realistically portray life in prison.
Development and production
Fontana was already involved as a screenwriter in the series chief physician Dr. Westphall and Homicide . For several years he and Rob Kenneally of Rysher Entertainment considered making a television series about a prison whose characters should be realistic and believable. They repeatedly presented corresponding ideas to representatives of the networks , who, however, always wanted to focus on the aspect of reparation and remorse. Fontana and Kenneally did not want that, so the idea was never turned into reality. It was only in a conversation with managers from HBO that Kenneally arose interest.
In many ways, "Oz" is based on Homicide , but also takes influences from series such as New York Cops - NYPD Blue or Emergency Room - The emergency room .
The series, which is played exclusively indoors, was shot in warehouses, initially in New York and later in New Jersey. The series broke with conventional broadcasting schemes in several ways. A season consisted of only eight episodes. The first broadcast did not begin in parallel with the series start of the network stations in September, but two months earlier in July, so the season ended before the series of the major networks began. The slot at 11:00 p.m. after the major broadcasts on the networks was just as unusual. The fourth season deviated from this scheme, it consisted of two 8 episodes, the first half of which ran from July to August 2000 and the second from January to February 2001. Reason were postponements in the production of a season of the Sopranos .
A first German-language synchronization of the series was discontinued after only four or five episodes, as the rights holder at the time found the series "too sensitive" and decided not to broadcast it on television. A new synchronization was made for the later broadcast on Sky.
reception
"Oz" was a template for the "Quality TV" series at HBO in the coming years, an "introduction for the audience to what would soon become HBO's clear philosophy of its own dramatic series". Commercially, however, it was never as successful as successors such as “ Sex and the City ” or “ Die Sopranos ”.
Fontana was the first in a series at HBO to take advantage of the artistic freedom that cable television offered through the absence of regulations regarding the representation of sex and violence, as well as explicit language. With the regular audience and large parts of the criticism, it was especially the intensity, the strong acting performances and the serious way in which the series dealt with difficult content-related issues that contributed to the success.
It was critically noted that the series, with its only seemingly realistic claim and the massive depiction of violence, reinforces the reservations of viewers towards prison inmates and the prison institution.
occupation
As an ensemble cast series, “Oz” is aimed at the largely uniform development of all characters and has no leading actors. The roles and their occupation are distributed as follows:
proof
- ↑ Axel Schmitt: Oz: Sky Atlantic HD shows HBO classics from the end of March . In: Serienjunkies.de . February 6, 2014. Retrieved February 6, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Michele Malach: Oz , in: Gary R. Edgerton, Jeffrey P. Jones (Eds.): The Essential HBO Reader , ISBN 9780813124520 , 2008, pp. 52-60
- ↑ a b Anthony C. Thompson: Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics , New York University Press, 2008, pp. 33-34
- ↑ Gabrielle DeGroot, Gabriella Daley: An Interview with Tom Fontana: The Producer of "Homicide" and "Oz" Reveals His Perceptions of Life in Prison. In: Corrections Today, 60: 1, 1998, pp. 50ff.
- ↑ a b Avi Santo: Para-Television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO in: It's Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-Television Era , Routledge, 2008, pp. 19-45
- ↑ http://www.quotenmeter.de/n/51279/der-experte-08-august-2011
- ↑ synchronkartei.de: Deutsche Synchronkartei , accessed on December 2, 2014
Web links
- Oz - Big House in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Oz at Moviepilot.de
- Oz - Hell behind bars at Fernsehserien.de