10 Reasons The Sopranos Is Still The Best TV Show Of All Time
3. Ambition
Had The Sopranos simply focussed on the mafia stuff, it would still have been exceptional television. Few crime dramas have managed to deglamorise the mob so effectively, and its insight into the dying days of organised crime and the behaviour of mafiosi have been lauded as particularly realistic by real mobsters.
The show does so much more than that, though. Most notably it boasts an incredibly vivid depiction of family dynamics, with one of the best observed marriages ever seen on TV in Tony and Carmella. Then there’s Chase’s fascination with therapy, and man’s capacity for real, substantial change.
As the years pass, they even encompass the war on terror, with law enforcement’s increased focus on outside threats making Tony and co’s crimes ever more prehistoric.
The Sopranos opened the floodgates for this kind of bold, far reaching TV, like Mad Men, ostensibly a show about advertising that morphs into a commentary on the American dream, or The Wire, which transcends the cop show format to give a passionate treatise on the institution of class. The initial selling point was the ever-popular gangster action, but that barely scratches the surface.