Soprano solo

Why The Sopranos is the best TV series ever made.

I wish I’d never watched an episode of The Sopranos. Because then I’d have 100 hours of the best TV ever made to look forward to. As it is, I am facing the end of an intense eight-year relationship. This week, the final episodes of The Sopranos come out on DVD. It’s one final big ‘hit’ before, like Christopher Moltisanti, I embark on my own 12-step recovery programme. It is time to break the code of Omertà: My name is Dan and I am a Sopranos addict.

The Sopranos is like the best film you’ve ever seen, only better because it lasts for 86 hardboiled episodes. In scope and style, in the classy quality of writing and acting and editing, in the sharpness of humour and violence, it is the most original and powerful TV drama ever made. That is not a glib generalisation, it is an objective fact. It has constantly and consistently sprouted ever-more compelling plotlines and developing recurring jokes, themes and characters to reward the addict without ostracising the first-timer.

In Tony Soprano, it has the ultimate anti-hero. He’s the head of the two pivotal New Jersey families: the don of a mafia business he runs from the back of his Bada Bing! strip club, and the father of his long-suffering wife Carmela’s two kids, Meadow and AJ. He is palpably human and vulnerable with clear failings as a father, as a husband, as a boss, as a man. He’s a murdering, philandering, corrupt brute. And yet… and yet you cannot help but love him.

As a leader, he is universally respected, even by his enemies. And with good reason. He’s a bad man with a keen sense of what is right; at once unscrupulous but heavily principled. Those in his sphere of considerable influence live their life according to his warped moral code. “What would Tony do?” He makes judgments with the Wisdom of Solomon, the ultimate wiseguy.

Creator David Chase and his team of writers have developed characters to an unparalleled degree, evolving in the manner of a sprawling, multi-layered social novel. We’ve seen Tony gain weight and lose hair, we’ve kept vigil at his deathbed and sat in on sessions with his shrink Dr Melfi. Like Carmela, we’ve turned a blind eye to his voracious appetite for extra-marital goomahs. We’ve seen relationships grow, disintegrate and sometimes repair; kids grow up, parents die off; cancer scares, drug addictions, depression; problems and threats subside and reappear. And we’ve seen every conceivable hue of teal pantsuit from Carmela, every hilarious Italianate hand gesture from the silver-winged Paulie Walnuts – “Madonn!” And has any man ever communicated so much through different gradations of downturned mouth than the always-dapper Silvio?

We’ve formed real attachments to all these characters, knowing from bitter experience that the writers have no room sentiment. They can kill it off with a .38, savagely club it to death with a pool cue, God forbid. And now, they’ve killed off the entire series. With this final box-set, it’s all over. Bada-bang!

It is fair to say that here at Time Out Towers, we have been counting down the days to this release like a jailbird Mafioso – but we’ve done our time fair and square. We’ve studiously steered clear of any plot spoilers, avoiding any articles written about it, sticking fingers in our eyes and la-la-lahing whenever anyone who impatiently downloaded the final episodes began talking about it.

We’ve been hungry for it, like a dressing gown-clad Tony, bathed in the light of his vast refrigerator as he burrows inside for leftover gabagool. When the DVD company sent us a review copy, three of us stayed late on a Friday night, waiting for the courier to deliver it. When it finally arrived, we played paper-scissor-stone for first dibs. I won.

Couldn’t we all watch it in the office? No, that wouldn’t do. It would be like drinking a fine wine from a plastic cup. It would be disrespectful. We have developed Sopranos rules and routine at home. My girlfriend and I have watched every episode together. We have to watch the opening credits in full and I sing along: “Woke up this morning, got myself a gun…” Afterwards, we dissect the episode. And I swagger and swear a lot in cod Noo Joy-sey. Whaddya gonna do?

I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Find a new box-set, I suppose. But I haven’t quite reached the final denouement of The Sopranos yet. I’m making it last, savouring ever last drop. All due respect.