The Sopranos: Still the Best Television Ever Made

Tony wants somebody to listen

Panic attacks bring Tony to Dr. Jennifer Melfi. The immediate contrast is wonderful: a man accustomed to projecting authority sits in a room where he has to explain himself, to someone who cannot simply accept his preferred version of events.

James Gandolfini makes those sessions endlessly watchable. Tony is not suddenly a different person when he is vulnerable. The defensiveness, charm, evasions and desire to be understood all remain there. He wants help, but he also wants to control what helping him is allowed to mean.

Lorraine Bracco gives Melfi the patience and resistance that this requires. The conversations are not a device for translating the episode into a tidy message. They can complicate what we think we know about Tony, and expose the distance between a feeling and the explanation he offers for it.

The premise could have produced a short joke about a mobster on a couch. Instead, it opens a way into a whole person.

The old days sound better when Tony describes them

Tony likes an idea of how things used to be. Loyalty, strength, respect: there is a reassuring version of the past in which people understood all three and everybody knew their place.

The show is much more interesting than that version. The men who appeal to codes and tradition are also vain, greedy, frightened and capable of interpreting a principle very conveniently. Tony's nostalgia tells us something about Tony; it does not settle the argument.

Michael Imperioli, as Christopher Moltisanti, gives the younger generation its own mixture of ambition and impatience. Christopher wants recognition, but recognition from these people comes with conditions. The gap between what he imagines for himself and the business immediately in front of him produces both tension and very good comedy.

I love how little the writing needs to underline these contradictions. A conversation can begin with an appeal to honour and end over money. The characters may not notice the shift quite as clearly as we do.

The two families cannot stay separate

The domestic life is not a pause between the gangster scenes. It is just as much the show. Tony has a wife, children and a mother; none of those relationships becomes straightforward because he has other dangerous business to attend to.

Edie Falco is extraordinary as Carmela. She understands the comforts of her life, and understands more about their source than it is always convenient to say. Falco can make a look across a kitchen carry an argument that nobody wants to have in full.

The marriage has familiarity as well as conflict. That matters. A relationship shown only at its worst would be easier to dismiss, and a character shown only making excuses would be easier to categorise. The Sopranos gives both people enough daily life that their accommodations feel specific.

Jamie-Lynn Sigler as Meadow and Robert Iler as A.J. bring the children's perspective into that house. They have ordinary expectations and frustrations alongside circumstances that are anything but ordinary. Tony can worry about them sincerely while remaining very selective about what he wants them to understand.

His relationship with his mother has another kind of pressure. Nancy Marchand's Livia does not need physical power to dominate a conversation. The family history is there in what Tony anticipates before she has finished speaking.

That is one of the show's great achievements: home and work do not feel like two different genres stitched together. The same habits, grievances and attempts at control travel between them.

A cast that makes the smallest exchange count

Gandolfini is at the centre of it all, but the series would not have this richness if everyone around him were merely supporting an impressive lead performance.

Tony Sirico makes Paulie Gualtieri wonderfully particular. The hair, the gestures and the phrasing are immediately recognisable, but the performance is more than a collection of mannerisms. Paulie's certainty about something can be funny and troubling at once.

Steven Van Zandt, as Silvio Dante, has a different rhythm: the considered response, the expression held just long enough. Dominic Chianese gives Junior pride and grievance without making either an abstract character trait. He can sound like a relative you know until you remember the context.

Drea de Matteo makes Adriana La Cerva emotionally present in a world that does not always take her seriously. Imperioli gives Christopher enough insecurity that his attempts to impress can be both painful and hilarious.

Together, they occupy the same world so naturally that it is easy to forget how carefully each performance is judged. A minor disagreement does not feel like actors taking turns to demonstrate a character. It feels like people who already have reasons to irritate each other.

It is much funnier than the reputation suggests

The seriousness of The Sopranos can obscure how entertaining it is. Not simply gripping or important: genuinely funny. The dialogue has misunderstandings, mangled expressions and petty disputes that would work as comedy even without the danger around them.

“Pine Barrens” remains a brilliant example of that range. Paulie and Christopher are very good company for the audience, even when they are not especially good company for each other.

The humour is also part of the character work. These men care intensely about small indignities. They have opinions on matters they do not understand and remarkably elaborate defences for things they simply want. The writing lets those details breathe.

Chase and the writers are just as willing to leave a conversation uncomfortable. A joke need not release all the tension. Sometimes laughing makes it more disconcerting when you remember what the person making you laugh is capable of.

The dreams and the therapy belong to that same confidence. The series does not restrict itself to a clean sequence of criminal problems and solutions. It makes space for the untidy things people carry around, including the things they would rather not put into words.