WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TONY SOPRANO?

On its 25th anniversary, a revolutionary drama is more influential than ever. But could it even be made in 2024?

- - JUDY BERMAN

DAVID CHASE IS FEELING THANKFUL. Twenty-five years after the premiere of the series that cemented his legacy, the Sopranos creator is filled with gratitude that he got to work with actors like James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, and Lorraine Bracco and a writing staff that included future Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire). Gratitude for the freedom HBO granted him. And now that the show is a consensus classic, he says, "I have a great deal of gratitude that people still see it. That people wanna hear about it."

Yet when I ask Chase, during a wide-ranging video chat in December, whether he thinks it would be possible to make The Sopranos today, his reply is firm: "No, I don't." Chase is not known for his optimism. And he's careful to note that he's a bit out of the industry loop. But he's not alone in doubting that the necessary conditions for a project of The Sopranos' ambition, originality, and cost exist in streaming-era Hollywood. As John Koblin, who with Felix Gillette co-authored It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO, puts it: a quarter-century after that show kicked off TV's most recent golden age, "it's extremely possible that the next few years aren't going to be quite so golden."

This is the irony that accompanies the anniversary of a series that recast the small screen in its brilliant, violent image-and whose prescience about the precarious nature of American life in the 21st century has made it even more relevant than it was when it debuted. It's an indictment of an industry that squandered one of its most fertile creative periods by sacrificing quality for quantity, embracing franchises, genre spectacles, and reality TV. But, as new generations discover The Sopranos, it's clear that audiences will always hunger for TV that plumbs the darkest depths of human nature. The question is: Has TV as an art form become too debased to satisfy that hunger again?