10 Reasons The Sopranos Is Still The Best TV Show Of All Time
5. The Details
The Sopranos wasn’t the first TV series to utilise a sprawling cast. Oz, premiering on HBO two years prior, is set in a prison and features probably an even larger selection of characters, but quite a few of these are essentially archetypes, background flavour.
By contrast, David Chase simply doesn’t create a character without giving them a fully fledged personality for the audience to latch onto. There’s no such thing as a small part in The Sopranos.
He’s patient with his development, too. When we’re first introduced to Tony’s crew, only a few of the characters really pop, but over the course of the season, we’re given an insight into everyone involved.
And then there’s Carmella and the other mob wives, the extended family, the families of Tony’s friends and criminal associates - the web expands further and further outward until we’ve got a detailed view of just about every character we’ve ever met.
This is an approach HBO shows like The Wire and Deadwood have since adopted, and in all of these cases it only increases the rewatchability of the series. There’s simply too much detail to take everything in on one go round.