Eamonn Walker

In Oz (1997), Eamonn Walker holds our attention as Kareem Saïd without making the other prisoners seem like supporting players. His controlled intensity gives the character authority, but leaves room for us to wonder what to make of him. We were absorbed by Saïd because Walker kept us curious even when sympathy was difficult. Alongside Lee Tergesen’s vulnerable Tobias Beecher and Harold Perrineau’s Augustus Hill, he helps make a crowded prison drama intelligible. We rate him most highly here, where being forceful does not mean drowning everybody else out.

His British television work included appearances in In Sickness and in Health from 1985 to 1987 and The Bill from 1988 to 1989. Tom Fontana’s Oz was the American breakthrough, and its demanding ensemble remains the strongest evidence for our view of him. Film work included Dr. Mathison in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000), alongside Bruce Willis. We recommend that film for its quiet grip and patience, despite a compressed closing stretch, but Walker’s part is not the reason for our verdict.

The leading parts make the pattern clearer. He played John Othello in the modern television adaptation Othello (2001), then spent years as Battalion Chief Wallace Boden in Chicago Fire (2012). These are roles that need an actor to establish authority; Walker’s controlled physical presence makes that casting understandable. The danger is that authority becomes all a part asks of him. Oz gives us more to consider, putting a man of faith under pressure and allowing the performance to develop.

There is a cost to choosing Oz as the starting point. Fontana’s programme can become so intent on cruelty that the excess is hard to defend, and Walker cannot remove that problem. What he can do, with Tergesen and Perrineau, is keep the people sufficiently distinct that the suffering does not become merely spectacle. Start there for Walker, but be prepared for a drama whose appetite for punishment can outlast our patience.