I Wrote This Review...Bada Bing...Kerching! (The Sopranos)

Member Name: eyedo6789

Product:	The Sopranos
Date:	24/03/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The Greatest Ever Mafia Genre Drama?

Disadvantages: Gradually Went Down The Pan After Series 3.

The Sopranos is a U.S. made television drama series about the criminal and day to day lives of modern day mostly Italian American Mafia members. It is a work of fiction but said to be broadly based on reality. It is set in Nuu Joyzee (That's New Jersey to you and me).

The programme ran for 6 series and 86 episodes all of which I have seen. It finished broadcasting in 2007.

The story is built around the character of Tony Soprano (played superbly by James Gandolfini) who in series 1 and parts of series 2 is second in command of the Soprano crime family. He ultimately becomes the head of the family.

What I like about this programme is that in the first two series as well as the usual violent stuff you associate with Mafia genre dramas there is the extra dynamic of Tony Soprano's internal mental battle with himself to try to understand whether he is a bad person or not and what he can do about it, if anything.

This internal mental battle is explored in regular scenes when he visits his psychiatrist and in certain episodes where against all of his natural instincts he manages to show an element of compassion for others or a degree of control over his usual fierce temper and extreme violent tendencies.

A constant in the first 3 series is his very strained and resentful relationship with his mother Livia (played by Nancy Marchand) who in my opinion steals the show in acting terms. Her character in the story is fundamental to why The Sopranos is very different to any other mobster genre piece ever made.

Regardless of all of the above, business is always business to Tony and his crew and when push comes to shove, murder, violence, dishonesty, intimidation, blackmail, loan sharking and general racketing are carried out routinely. Love and protection of their wives, children and immediate family and loyalty to their own crew are also always high on the agenda, but so too is cheating on their wives and plotting and scheming within their own organisation for financial gain or a promotion in status.

Each programme starts off with the brilliant "Woke Up This Morning" theme music, by Alabama 3, which instantly gets the viewer in the mood to expect murder, mayhem and intense drama.

I feel that the first 2 or 3 series of the show were pure television gold but as it went into series 4, 5 & 6 it was still good and very watchable but nowhere near at the same level of genius writing and storylines as it had been earlier on.

Some great characters and actors arrived in the latter series such as Frank Loggia, Steve Buscemi and Joe Pantoliano but I think that the show declined because the character of Tony Soprano's mother died and because the writers simply ran out of great storylines as they had used up most of them in the first three series.

The programme also started to suffer from a loss of continuity of storyline which left me very disappointed when tuning into new episodes only to find that an unfinished crucial part of the plot from the previous episode was not being revisited or concluded in any way.

One big weakness in terms of overall believability of the story is that by the time you were watching series 4 there had been so many characters that had either been killed or who had mysteriously disappeared (been killed in other words) that it is inconceivable in real life that some of the remaining characters would not question such a blatant pattern and frequency of this happening to people in their inner circle as being something very strange that needed questioning and discussing.

None of this questioning happened and the remaining characters appeared to carry on not wondering at all why a third of the people they knew 2 years earlier were now dead.

I am relating this comment mainly to the women and especially to the children in the story who to a great extent had the criminal and murderous goings on of the male characters hidden from them.

Overall, watching the Sopranos was a tremendously enjoyable experience which maintained unbelievably high standards of writing, production and acting for most of the first 3 series and was still very good in series 4, 5 & 6.

Summary: It's a CRIME not to watch it!