Oz

A volatile men-in-prison soap opera, fuelled by testosterone and lubricated by blood, HBO's Oz is addictive viewing. The third season of the most violent show on cable TV, set in a cage of concrete and steel and glass, opens with echoes of violence past. Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) is in solitary confinement for brutally blinding a guard, one-time drug lord Simon Adebissi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) mourns for his murdered father, and Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) nurses bones broken by Aryan Brotherhood leader Schillinger (J.K. Simmons) and a heart broken by the betrayal of Keller (Christopher Meloni). Their stories of vengeance, redemption, and forgiveness anchor this season which gives a no-holds-barred account of prison life with all the plots, subplots and conflicts given context and explanation by the show's wheelchair-bound narrator, Augustus Hill.