The Sopranos has become a history, that was the first TV show, which was an absolutely new mode of a binge, longform consumption of the video content.
Everyone who watched The Sopranos, did it in practically a single sitting, pausing only for snacks and toilet breaks. In 1999, this HBO TV show demonstrated the new level, presented a new era of the video entertainment. In other words, this was a new mode of television, one which showed the medium was capable of exceeding cinema.
The Sopranos has finished 10 years ago but it is still the masterpiece. Starring the late James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, the series showed a hulking New Jersey mobster who was so violently, effectively intimidating that even as a viewer you were nervous of him, felt a strange need to be in his good graces and were flush with relief at the humanity he occasionally exuded.
One of the main lines of the TV show is the relations with Dr Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), with whom Tony Soprano seeks therapy following a panic attack and in whose sessions his vulnerable sense of supreme male security is exposed and queried.
David Chase about The Sopranos
David Chase, of course, didn’t anticipate such a loud resonance of his TV-creation – the show was included into the annals of the cinema history. The director Chase explains its success very simply:
“All I wanted to do was present the idea of how short life is and how precious it is. The only way I felt I could do that was to rip it away.”
Every feature of The Sopranos has become a meme: T-shirts with Bada-Bing logo, Christopher’s tabooed lexicon, the soundtrack. The Sopranos was done in 2007 but it is still alive and influential. Thanks to David Chase’s TV-show, the range and capability of television drama were expanded enormously and forever.
