Across six seasons, (the last one being almost twice as long as
previous seasons), and eighty-six episodes "The Sopranos" took in
everything from the Kennedy Assassinations to the War of Terror as well
as Ben Kingsley and Lauren Bacall playing themselves in an almost
surreal spoof of Hollywood and the movie-making business. Elsewhere,
Nancy Sinatra and Frank Sinatra Jr. and, if only in a dream, (there were
a lot of dreams in "The Sopranos"), Annette Bening also turned up as themselves.
It was a series in love with the movies and popular music, with almost
every episode ending with a song. Naturally, it kept referencing the
Godfather films while hardly an episode went by without an old movie
cropping up on television; you could have a lot of fun seeing how fast
you could guess what film was playing and it took some delight in
casting Peter Bogdanovich as a slightly prissy analyst.
It cast
Steven Van Zandt, he of the rock band Little Steven and the Disciples of
Soul, as Tony Soprano's consigliere and it cast Lorraine Bracco, she of
"Goodfellas" fame, as Tony's analyst. Actually, it cast several of the
"Goodfellas" cast in major roles, most notably Michael Imperioli and
Frank Vincent. In a way, "Goodfellas" became its jumping off point. Was
Tony some kind of extension of Paul Sorvino's Paul Cicero in the
Scorsese film and was Michael Imperioli's Christopher in some way
'based' on the character of Henry Hill? I could certainly see
similarities between the characters and a number of plot strands spread
over those eighty-six episodes but you could say "The Sopranos" went
further and deeper than any gangster film or series before or since.
It took its time getting to that controversial final episode but it never flagged; every episode was a diamond polished to perfection with the best episodes reaching the kind of dizzy heights we seldom associate with television. It was also one of the greatest examples of 'television by committee' that I can think of. David Chase may have originated the series but over several years it employed a number of writers and directors to carry it through; you could say it was the antithesis of the auteur theory. Was it the greatest television series of all time? Probably. I'm not sure we will ever see its like again.
It cast
Steven Van Zandt, he of the rock band Little Steven and the Disciples of
Soul, as Tony Soprano's consigliere and it cast Lorraine Bracco, she of
"Goodfellas" fame, as Tony's analyst. Actually, it cast several of the
"Goodfellas" cast in major roles, most notably Michael Imperioli and
Frank Vincent. In a way, "Goodfellas" became its jumping off point. Was
Tony some kind of extension of Paul Sorvino's Paul Cicero in the
Scorsese film and was Michael Imperioli's Christopher in some way
'based' on the character of Henry Hill? I could certainly see
similarities between the characters and a number of plot strands spread
over those eighty-six episodes but you could say "The Sopranos" went
further and deeper than any gangster film or series before or since.It took its time getting to that controversial final episode but it never flagged; every episode was a diamond polished to perfection with the best episodes reaching the kind of dizzy heights we seldom associate with television. It was also one of the greatest examples of 'television by committee' that I can think of. David Chase may have originated the series but over several years it employed a number of writers and directors to carry it through; you could say it was the antithesis of the auteur theory. Was it the greatest television series of all time? Probably. I'm not sure we will ever see its like again.
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