The sopranos

Two of the highest-profile show launches of the past month are also two of the least original. If your taste runs to hard-bitten, Sopranos­-accented crime, then you might enjoy the new HBO series The Penguin, with Colin Farrell reprising his role from 2022’s The Batman as Oswald Cobb, the so-called “Penguin,” a Mafioso who is attempting to gain control of Gotham City’s crime underworld following the death of Carmine Falcone. And if you’re more interested in female-driven whimsy, then Marvel’s Agatha All Along, the latest genre-hopping comedy-drama-fantasy-horror on Disney+, will allow Kathryn Hahn ample opportunity to chew the scenery as the witch Agatha Harkness, who forms a new coven after the misadventures of WandaVision.

As I entered the lobby of Circle in the Square Theatre, now showing Broadway’s hottest ticket, An Enemy of the People, staff were upselling booze. “Do you want to buy a shot?” offered one enthusiastic barman, waving a bottle of bracing Linie aquavit. He added, grinning: “It’s what the actors drink on stage.” Sam Gold’s revival of Henrik Ibsen’s didactic and stuffy morality play aims to draw direct comparisons between past and present, including what alcohol we consume (more on that later). In late nineteenth-century Norway, a town finds itself prosperous by selling access to the local spa baths, which supposedly have curative properties. When Dr.

This week's finale of AMC's Better Call Saul represented a quiet end to the Golden Age of Television. It's a fitting end for Prestige TV — marked by lavish sets, sex, violence and episodes as expensive as feature films — to end with a small black-and-white ode to a spin-off. Bob Odenkirk's performance as Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, a pivotal bit character in Breaking Bad a decade ago, was marked by over-the-top colorful courtroom flair, but it ends with somber black-and-white drama and a quiet prison cell, serving almost as a muted on-screen act of penance for all that came before.

The Sopranos is called the greatest television show in history. It is the tale of Anthony ‘Tony’ Soprano, a middle-aged man in psychotherapy who also happens to run a New Jersey crime family. Anthony means ‘priceless’; the choice of name is surely deliberate. The Sopranos is complex — all masterpieces are — but it is fundamentally about greed: for money; for sex (the crew inhabit the Bada Bing! lap-dancing club, where breasts are landscape); for alcohol; for power; for the base drug of food. In the first episode Tony, who is played by James Gandolfini as a human devil, all need and charm (he is defiantly sexy with his fat hands and dachshund’s eyes), is almost human-looking. By the end, he is immense.

Having been fired from World Championship Wrestling, Steve Austin entered the World Wrestling Federation with the godawful gimmick of 'the Ringmaster’. He looked no more memorable than a Big Mac. Austin knew that something had to change. He wanted to adopt an edgier, more cold-blooded character. The WWF’s creative team, displaying the genius that had inspired 'Mantaur’, a wrestler who dressed up as a Minotaur, and 'the Gobbledy Gooker’, proposed such names as 'Otto Von Ruthless’ and 'Chilly McFreeze’. According to wrestling legend, Austin was at home when his wife told him to drink his tea before it turned 'stone cold’. Stone Cold Steve Austin was born. He quickly flourished.

Talking Sopranos — a new weekly podcast which launched this month— is another example of a seemingly unstoppable sub-genre occupying an ever-growing slice of the podcast market: the television-rewatch podcast. The format is simple: take any much-loved yet expired television series (the kind usually prefaced by words like ‘I can’t believe you haven’t seen…’) and scan the cast list until you find some former stars willing to work for an affordable rate. Record them giving an audio commentary on each episode and, bingo, you’ve got yourself dozens of hours of podcasts — and a massive fan base waiting to be converted to listeners.

This week marks 20 years in the can for The Sopranos, the TV series which almost instantly transformed into a ‘cultural phenomenon,’ although the term ‘cultural phenomenon’ is exactly the kind of cliche that most characters on the show probably would have hated. Indeed, it’s not a moniker particularly embraced by the show’s creator, David Chase, who always seemed to project a bit of depressive resignation about his role front-running the series. Asked at a panel event Wednesday night what his reaction was to the anniversary hooplah, Chase simply responded: ‘Well, confused.’ The Sopranos today has a somewhat confused legacy, because two decades later it’s firmly entered into the realm of nostalgic reminiscence.