My Life With The Sopranos

I started with the first series which first aired in 1999 for obvious reasons.The premise of a mobster in analysis is shared with The Robert De Niro film Analyze This a comedy which came out just after the first Sopranos episodes.This was complete coincidence both projects had arrived at the same idea completely independently being in ignorance of one another.David Chase the creator of The Sopranos was worried about this but managed to get his show out first. The Sopranos had originally been planned as a feature film using the themes of the first series and the plot involving Tony Sopranos mother.The first series can in fact be viewed as a wonderful extended movie over several sittings which moves to a resolution and denouement.The main characters who will accompany you through the next five series are all introduced in the first series Tony Soprano,his wife and children,his nephew Christopher his associates Silvio Dante and Paul Galtieri his nemesis Uncle Junior.The ongoing work is of the order of a Wagner s Ring Cycle of gangster movies actually being much longer.Unlike a soap it is a genuine work of art as everything in it has a purpose and like an opera there are recurrent themes in it .Also like all the most serious works of art it is a tragedy,a theme I will return to later.I spoke earlier of the classic gangster movies such as The Godfather films.Leones Once Upon A Time In America and Goodfellas being set in the time frames of the 1920s to 1970s respectively.Although first aired in 1999 The Sopranos is already a period piece.The period it is largely set in is that between 911  and the crash of 2008 although it actually finished by 2007.The age of George Bush although it ended less than three years ago already seems like another era.This was the age when America was obsessed with the War On Terror  and the war in Iraq.America was economically secure despite being embattled and fearful unlike Obamas America which often seems like a ghost of the nation that existed a few short years ago,sometimes the world outside can go a long time before remembering it is still there.