Oz chronicles life inside an experimental cell block in the Oswald Maximum Security Correctional Facility: Level Four called Emerald City. Under unit manager Tim McManus and Warden Leo Glynn the inmates in Em City all struggle to fulfill their own needs. Some fight for power either power over the drug trade or power over the other inmate factions. Others want money either through slinging tits drugs gambling or other scams. Others Corrections officers and inmates alike simply want to survive long enough to make parole or even to see tomorrow. The show gives a no holdsbarred account of prison life with all the plots subplots and conflicts given context and explanation by the shows wheelchair bound narrator Augustus Hill.