Orange County and Beverly Hills have “The Real Housewives.” The San Francisco Giants had “The Franchise” on Showtime last summer.

Now, Oakland is getting ready for a reality television close-up. Naturally, it is a show about marijuana.

The Discovery Channel will broadcast the first episode of “Weed Wars” on Thursday. The four-part series offers an inside look at the medical marijuana business at Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest dispensary on the West Coast. The show stars the colorful crew that runs the dispensary: Steve DeAngelo, the silver-pigtailed co-founder and executive director; Luigi Zamarra, the nervous accountant; and Dave Wedding Dress, the bearded, dress-wearing co-founder, among others.

The day-to-day routine, it turns out, is a mix of the achingly mundane and the risky. In one episode, as Terryn, a Harborside “bud tender,” frets about aphids killing his plants, Mr. DeAngelo stares into the camera lens and says, “At any moment federal agents could break through these doors and lock me up for the rest of my life.” In fact, the Justice Department announced a big crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries across California soon after the series finished its scheduled shooting, though Harborside remains open.