It was the TV show that changed the game. A show that redefined what television could be. Even in the age of ‘peak tv’, it still routinely tops critics favourite lists. Its bold, ambiguous ending remains a bone of contention to this day and its protagonist is still the benchmark for complex, compelling anti-heroes. I’m talking of course about The Sopranos, and a little over twenty years after it’s debut, I finally got round to watching it.
I’ll admit, I was sceptical. This show is, well, old. It predates mobile phones. I’ve grown up with an embarrassment of televisual riches: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Westworld, Sherlock, Game of Thrones! Sure it was good in its day, but could The Sopranos really stack up now? Yes, yes it can. With bells on… Please please please, watch this show before reading any spoilers, because you owe it to yourself to experience this story as it was intended.
I don’t know if it was a by-product of my binge-consumption, but watching The Sopranos honestly felt like a defining experience. A before and after sort of thing. In my head now, all TV will be compared to The Sopranos. It really is the purest form of television I’ve ever encountered; visceral yet elevating, demonstrating everything that the medium is capable of delivering. There are stylisticly bold lyrical elements, but the characters also feel grounded in a real, dense, richly evocative world. The lead is brilliantly engaging and challenging at the same time, but this is achieved without short selling the rest of the characters, each of whom is dynamic and multi-faceted. More than that, it gave me that rare sensation of actually seeing real people going about their lives and interacting with each other. Yet, for all this organic, naturalistic sensation, the show overall felt beautifully structured, controlled and poised. There’s no fat here at all, every scene adds meaning or pushes the story along. It’s an astonishing piece of work.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. For the uninitiated, The Sopranos is the story of Italian-American Anthony ‘Tony’ Soprano. He’s a mobster from New Jersey who’s feeling the strain of trying to balance the often competing demands of his mob family and his real family. With a potential mobster power stuggle on the horizon and his only daughter preparing to leave for college, the charming, philandering and occationally murderous Tony is under steadily increasing pressure at home and at ‘work’. He eventually blacks out from a panic attack, and in desperation seeks the help of a psychiatrist. There the fundemental question is posed: can our complicated protagonist change, and does he really want to?
I say protagonist, because Tony is by no stretch of the imagination a hero. He is a murderer, a compulsive adulterer, a bully and a hypocrite. Far from shying away from uglier aspects of his personality, the show shines a light on them, revealing yet greater depths of violence and resentment. The show is almost perpetually flirting with the possibility that Tony is in fact a psychopath, incapable of empathy or remorse, and so completely beyond the help of modern psychiatry. Dr Melfi eventually comes to believe this is the case. And yet, his flashes of self-awareness and apparently genuine affection for his family preclude any clear answer one way or another. For me, Tony is someone who is unwilling to make the sacrifices he needs to get healthy. He wants to change, he just doesn’t want it enough, and that’s even more tragic than being unable to change at all.
But what a journey we take to get there! Even at his worst, Tony is never less than enthralling, and I followed him every step of the way. With his untimely death at just 51, only few years after the show ended, James Gandolfini will be forever remembered as the man behind Tony Soprano. And yet, even had he enjoyed the long and full career he so clearly deserved, I find it hard to believe he could ever have been better than he is here. I know I’m gushing, but it really does go beyond a performance – he IS Tony. The way he holds himself, the glimpses of the little boy inside the hulking man, the charm, the shared anecdotes, even the way he eats – it all just feels real, and you can’t take your eyes of him. You can see why the life of a gangster appeals, but also that Tony is self-aware enough to recognise the impact it has on himself and his family. He is vicious and ruthless, but also funny and perceptive and surprisingly vulnerable. He does appalling things – through indifference as much as through action – but you also see the damage that has been done to him. That mother of his…
Yeah, his Dad was a bastard too, but Livia Soprano looms large as possibly the most terrifying character in this show (and believe me, that’s saying something). Again, the performance here is incredible; I cannot explain how much I utterly loathed this woman. But, like her son after her, for all her bad choices, Livia is a product of her environment. She was made, not born. Educated people at dinner parties offer diagnoses and labels from a distance as a way to dismiss Livia and Tony, to minimise the responsibility the world has for creating and encouraging people like them- and by extension, the terrible harm they do to others.
Honestly, there is so much to love here, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I haven’t mentioned how darkly funny this show often is, how it sets up expectations only to complicate and subvert them. There’s received wisdom that all characters should be shades of grey, but no other show does that as vividly and as deftly as The Sopranos. It’s not just an aspect of the show, it’s right at the heart of it, in its very DNA.
And that ending! There’s an amazingly in-depth study of that final episode which argues – and I have to agree – that the ending is showing us Tony’s death. It’s the whole story in microcosm. Had he taken the time to look around, he would have seen it coming and been able to shield himself and his family from the violence, but Tony is enjoying himself too much to do that. It was always going to come to this. That whole last episode is him saying goodbye without realizing it, the tension slowly building to that final, inevitable moment – my nerves were in shreds the whole time, but I have to admit it was perfectly done. No gore, no great dramatic reckoning, just silence. Challenging, elegant and impossible to pin down – a fitting end for this magnificent, incomparable story.
I’ve missed out so much here, but do you agree this is the greatest TV drama ever? If not, what series do you think deserves the mantle and why? What did you make of that ending? As always, let me know!
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