GANGSTER’S PARADIGM

On 10 January 1999, Tony Soprano walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed television, irrevocably. The mobster, seeking help for his panic attacks, was a barrel of contradictions, kicking a man’s already broken leg then lovingly asking a group of ducks if they’d like a second ramp into his pool. The era of prestige television – of the complicated narratives, antiheroes and moral ambiguity in Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Wire – had commenced and there was no going back.

Creator David Chase hacked apart the conventions and limitations of what a mobster story could be. The sharp glamour of was stripped away, leaving complicated men wearing fluffy robes in suburban New Jersey who fundamentally know that this mafia thing ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. In his first session Tony says as much, telling Dr Melfi Lorraine Bracco), “The morning of the day I got sick I’ve been thinking it’s good to be in something from the ground