Television series

The Sopranos

Name: The Sopranos
Genre: Drama, Crime
Released: 1999
Cast: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Steven Van Zandt, Tony Sirico

Tony Soprano is a mob boss with panic attacks, a McMansion, and a therapist he can't quite lie to. David Chase's series uses the gangster genre as a Trojan horse for a much bigger question: can any of us actually change? It's darkly funny, unbearably tense, and one of the great character studies ever put on screen. Patient viewers only — this rewards sitting still.

TVMaze rating

8.8

If you liked this

The Wire2002

If Sopranos made you fall for morally tangled crime drama, this is the other half of the syllabus — colder, wider, more interested in institutions than psyches, and just as devastating.

But No Tony-style charisma to hang onto, and the slow-burn structure asks for real patience before it pays off.

GoodFellas1990

Chase has said outright how much this shaped the show's DNA — the voiceover, the needle drops, the giddy violence curdling into dread. It's the bloodline.

But Faster and glossier than Sopranos ever gets; less interested in sitting with consequence than in the rush before it.

Mad Men2007

Swap the Bergin County backyard for a Manhattan ad agency and you get the same slow dissection of postwar masculinity, denial, and the lie of having it all.

But Far less violence, far more silence — its pleasures are in glances and subtext rather than tension and threat.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer1992no page yet

Tony's therapy sessions are fiction's version of this: a killer explaining himself to an audience, insisting he's a good family man. This is the unscripted, far colder original.

A documentary interview with real contract killer Richard Kuklinski, who also maintained a loving suburban family life his wife and kids knew nothing about.

But There's no writerly irony or dark comedy here to soften it — just a real man calmly describing real murders.

Boardwalk Empire2010

Terence Winter, a Sopranos writer, builds an entire Prohibition-era empire with the same appetite for doomed men and moral rot dressed in beautiful tailoring.

But Bigger canvas, more historical furniture to keep track of — it never quite matches the intimacy of Tony's living room.

Six Feet Under2001

Another HBO family drama obsessed with death, denial, and the gap between what people say at dinner and what they actually feel — just without the guns.

But Melodramatic in ways Sopranos mostly resists, and the ending's emotional swing isn't for everyone.

Deadwood2004

Same HBO instinct for building a whole rotten ecosystem of ambition and self-interest, just relocated to a lawless mining camp with unbelievable dialogue.

But The Shakespearean profanity and dense plotting take real effort to tune into before it clicks.

The Godfather1972

The mythic version of everything Sopranos deflates — watch this first (or again) to see the operatic ideal Tony is failing to live up to every single day.

But Reverent and stately where Sopranos is jittery and ironic; if you want the show's comic bite, this isn't it.

Breaking Bad2008

Another ordinary-seeming man discovering the monster underneath, told with the same patience for watching a person justify themselves right up to the edge.

But More plot-driven and propulsive — less interested in ambiguity, more in watching dominoes fall precisely.

Oz1997

HBO's first great drama and arguably Sopranos' scrappier older sibling — brutal, theatrical, unafraid to make you sit with characters who do awful things.

But Rougher production values and a bleaker, more punishing tone with far less humor to cut the darkness.

Big Deal on Madonna Street1958

Decades before Chase, Italian cinema was already mining organized crime for comedy and pathos rather than glamour. This is the ancestor of the show's blackly funny streak.

An Italian comic heist film about a gang of hapless small-time crooks whose big score falls apart through sheer incompetence — funny, warm, and full of Italian-American swagger.

But It's a lighthearted farce with zero psychological depth — pure comfort viewing, nothing like Sopranos' weight.

In Treatment2008

Chase used Melfi's office as a pressure valve; this show makes that room the whole story. Same mechanism of confession and self-deception, isolated and magnified.

An entire series built from therapy sessions — patients arriving weekly to unravel themselves to one analyst, in real time, almost entirely through talk.

But It's stagey and claustrophobic by design, with none of the crime plot, violence, or ensemble sprawl to break up the intensity.