GANGSTER'S PARADIGM

With prequel movie The Many Saints Of Newark about to hit cinemas, Total Film pays respect to modern TV classic THE SOPRANOS, and how a hit show changed the mob genre, long-form storytelling and audience expectations forever.

- LEILA LATIF

On 10 January 1999, Tony Soprano walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed television, irrevocably. The mobster, seeking help for his panic attacks, was a barrel of contradictions, kicking a man’s already broken leg then lovingly asking a group of ducks if they’d like a second ramp into his pool. The era of prestige television - of the complicated narratives, antiheroes and moral ambiguity in Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Wire - had commenced and there was no going back.

Creator David Chase hacked apart the conventions and limitations of what a mobster story could be. The sharp glamour of The Godfather was stripped away, leaving complicated men wearing fluffy robes in suburban New Jersey who fundamentally know that this mafia thing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. In his first session Tony says as much, telling Dr Melfi (Goodfellas’ Lorraine Bracco), “The morning of the day I got sick I’ve been thinking it’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately I’ve been getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”

Tony’s wife Carmela winks at the comparison a few minutes later, telling her priest, “Tony watches Godfather II all the time.” Part of the brilliance of