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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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This HBO Mafia drama series comes wreathed in critical garlands like it just got off the boat at Fantasy Island. But in a decade that’s seen so many seminal American crime shows like Homicide, NYPD Blue, and Oz ( all which pay debt to Hill Street Blues of course), what separates Tony Soprano’s neurotic weekly ‘Business’ dealings out for special hugs and kisses ?
Well to start with it has those nicely tense psychiatry sessions between Tony and slow talking Lorraine Bracco that punctuate the episodes and bring out elements to the plot which shows like Homicide had to reveal via regular character dialogue (which often felt corny and overplayed). That said The Sopranos owes much to the Barry Levinson (creator of Homicide) school of important issues interspersed with idle cultural banter. Many of Tony’s pals are occasionally surprisingly eloquent when it comes to discussing Tony’s family problems, - ‘It’s hard raising a kid in the Information Age buddy,’ says the owner of the knowingly titled Mafia run lap dancing bar ‘Badda-Bing!’.
It’s Tony’s split loyalties to his own family and ‘The Family’ that are the crux of the show. Between his anxiety about his son and daughter’s growing awareness of his job (he kills a snitch while taking his daughter to her prospective college choices prompting the response – ‘Daddy, are you in the mafia?’), and wrestling with his psychiatrist over the reasons why, at the beginning of the first episode, he collapsed on discovering the ducks had left his garden pond. Tony seems to be on a weekly self-discovery programme.
Whereas Homicide et al are all large ensemble pieces, The Sopranos is really just Tony’s show. It’s a lot simpler in plot structure and despite the occasional disorientating flashback, it’s nice to know you can drop in on this anytime. So perhaps not ‘The best TV show EVER !’ as some mad pundit gets quoted on the video box (hadn’t that guy seen Badger ?) – it’s neither as original as Oz or as funny as Bakersfield P.D., but it’s so sharply scripted and performed that it’s easily shakes off the ‘Goodfellas sitcom’ concept tag it could’ve become. I mean, to really see how badly this could’ve been done go see ‘Mickey Blue-Eyes’ – euurrgh!.
Channel 4 Thursdays 22.00 BST
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