The Sopranos: Every Season Ranked Worst To Best
The highs and lows of the modern mob masterpiece.
Choosing your favourite season of The Sopranos is like picking your favourite child. Each collection of episodes is magnificent and special in its own way, offering something slightly different while adding to the overarching narrative at the same time (the child analogy falls apart a bit here).
The show evolved majorly over its eight year run, and while David Chase’s vision is a clear one throughout, the scale and ambition of the show in its early days is totally different to the series we end up with for that still much-debated finale.
That’s all to say that your favourite season of The Sopranos will be influenced by your own genre tastes, whether you prefer something in the lineage of exciting gangster cinema or something with a wider scope and a heavy, occasionally oblique outlook. The show covered many genres and styles - there’s something for everyone in there.
By no means is any series of The Sopranos bad, but if pressed to make a decision, here’s how we’d rank the seven seasons (accounting for season six’s midway split), which range in quality from very, very good to genuine telly perfection.
7. Season One
Our introduction to Tony Soprano and co. is an extremely confident one. We open with our initial hook - a mobster walks into a psychiatrist’s office - and from there build on Tony’s double life as a philandering mafioso and family man (key to Tony’s character development - he’s always trying to be a good dad, something nearly every heavy drama would crib).
The major characters are set up beautifully, and from day one James Gandolfini and Edie Falco prove to be two of the finest TV actors in history. Christopher, Uncle Junior, Tony’s troublesome mom Livia - the core is established from the off.
It’s not for a while, though, that The Sopranos explores its deep bench. Paulie and Sil are there, but given minimal depth. Dr Melfi will go on to become much more interesting too. Indeed, one of the reasons The Sopranos maintains and even improves over time is Chase’s ability to delve so far into each of his characters, some of which are more archetypes at this point.
Season one is also far more of a standard gangster story. Beyond the psychiatry and family stuff, this is Tony’s rise to power. It’s thrilling stuff, particularly at the end, but the show has barely begun to flex at this point.