With shows such as Six Feet Under and The Sopranos, premium cable network HBO has a deserved reputation for edgy, quality drama. But it was on this day ten years ago that the network premiered Oz, its first one-hour dramatic television series. Set within a maximum security prison somewhere in the United States, the prison drama broke boundaries with its violence, profanity and nudity, as well as with its diverse and multi-racial cast of strongly imagined characters. Tom Fontana, writer and executive producer for Oz, recently spoke with AfterElton.com about the show and its place in television history.

From the beginning, “this show's about power”

Premiering before Will & Grace or Queer As Folk, and running until 2003, Oz would arguably go on to do better than either of them in showing the full spectrum of male sexuality. The drama convincingly portrayed the myriad ways sexuality could be expressed between men whether gay, bi or straight. It would also give viewers one of television's most memorable male/male relationships in the long-running, powerful and complex romance between prisoners Chris Keller (played by Christopher Meloni) and Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen).

When Oz premiered, Fontana was simultaneously juggling another critically-acclaimed series, Homicide: Life on the Street which would have its own groundbreaking gay moment when Detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), was outed as a bisexual in January 1998. However, Bayliss' bisexuality never went beyond a few dates and discussions with co-workers. Fontana explained why the nature of Oz allowed him to go further in exploring the characters' sexuality than on Homicide:

“The thing is with Homicide, you know, we did so little about the detectives' personal lives, because what we really wanted was their characters to be revealed through their work. [...] Whereas the dynamic of Oz always was — because this show's about power — and so the element of sexuality as it relates to power... whether it's straight, gay, bi, or whatever... always was in play, from the very beginning.”

Indeed, from the beginning, the show featured gay characters prominently. Some may have been on the traditional ‘gay man' rung of the power ladder — namely, the bottom of the pecking order. Such was the case with first season character Billie Keane (Derrick Simmons), the effeminate brother of inmate Jefferson Keane (Leon), who needed protecting from the other inmates.

But later seasons also showed gay men who were unabashedly willing to assert themselves. Richie Hanlon (Jordan Lage), a gay prisoner who entered Oz in Season 2, quickly encountered sexual harassment from fellow prisoner Mark Mack (Leif Riddell), but was unwilling to take the abuse:

Mack: You're a fag. You suck dick. So what's the problem?
Hanlon: I suck the dicks I want to suck, so f*** you.

Being set in prison, however, the show also dealt frankly with the sexuality of prisoners who did not consider themselves gay, yet were driven into same-sex relations either through loneliness or through rape. One of the primary ways these themes were explored was through the character of Tobias Beecher. Beecher was a wealthy, middle-class lawyer, husband and father, who found himself in Oz (the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility) after accidentally killing a girl while driving drunk.

Totally unequipped for prison life in the first season, Beecher fell prey to Vern Schillinger (J.K. Simmons), the white supremacist leader of the Aryan Brotherhood in Oz. Schillinger's homophobia did not prevent him from trying to rape any unprotected white man who came through the gates of the prison.

Beecher fought back from his initial “prag” (i.e. sexual slave) status, eventually establishing a level of independence from Schillinger, although the power struggle between the two men would continue till the end of the series.

Once free of Schillinger, though, Beecher also struggled with the loneliness that Fontana says was another central theme of the series:

“It wasn't that I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, here's an opportunity to show a lot of guys f***ing', it was really an opportunity, for me, to talk about the loneliness, and how the loneliness, in anybody's life, becomes compensated [for] [...] That's why in the first season I had the thing where [the governor] got rid of conjugal visits [for the prisoners], because I wanted the stakes to be intensified as opposed to there being this release.”