It is worth discussing Netflix productions in the context of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad etc though.

Their original shows don’t quite have the same credibility and cultural cachet, but they are getting closer IMO.

Of course the best TV show of 2020 was a streaming service production anyway… The Mandalorian.

homeland S5? no it was awful. I’d given up on it part way through 4 but the wife made me sit threw more. it was torture.

Not sure if mentioned, but due in cinemas in March ’21 (yeah, right) the Many Saints of Newark: sopranos prequel movie. I, for one, will be hitting the Vue when that finally arrives!

but due in cinemas in March ’21 (yeah, right) the Many Saints of Newark

cool, had no idea that was being done! Just watched the trailer and saw “from the director of: Thor, Terminator: Genisys” and I was “nooooooo!!!” but then a quick google reveals before all that shite he’s done some solid TV stuff (including The Sopranos!) 😃 There’s a very rich backstory in the Sopranos so they’ve got a lot to work with, lots of great characters mentioned from the old days but never seen (or seen as old men).

Another quality series I’d recommend is “This is England”, there’s a film which is followed by 3 TV series. The film’s 99p to rent on Amazon and the series’ are all on All4.

Chase discusses the movie on that podcast mentioned earlier.

Young Tony is played by Gandolfini’s son!

cant wait for it either, but in fairness all 86 episodes were like movies anyway – it will be like an extra length episode!

Homeland started off really well, if a bit contrived. Season 2 was not as good. I guess I watched Season 3 and gave up, not completely sure. It just got completely silly, the CIA analyst getting pregnant with the terrorist’s baby. I heard it got better again, but I just wasn’t interested anymore. If they’d stopped at one season, it would have gone down as a fantastic show.

@johnx2

Anway, Sopranos: each time I see/hear the HBO tone and white noise screen, I still hear the Alabama Three kick in “Woke up one morning, got myself a gun…” And I’ve watched a lot of HBO since the Sopranos ended. Absolutely superb but unfortunately aired on a Thursday night which meant my wife watched it and it was my pub night, if anyone remembers pubs, and I’d usually be in late as it did lockins. Sigh. So there’s a few series I’ve missed half of. But not sure I can face going again from the beginning (my wife’s memory for narrative being as poor as her self-restraint. Positives and negatives…). So waddyagonnado?

Snap! The starting HBO ident is ALWAYS followed by the Alabama 3 in my head. My current Mrs has never seen the Sopranos and usually shys away from violent TV but she’s a counsellor and has mentioned watching it a couple of times. So on the back of this thread we watched the first two episodes last night. Tony looked a lot thinner than I remembered in the pilot and it was good to watch it with a fresh pair of eyes. I think I might end up watching it again – it will be very different watching it in chunks rather than waiting a week between episodes like in the old days.

Christopher’s intervention where he shouts back at Tony for being a fat **** that will proabably die of a coronary 😳

Christopher sitting on Adriana’s dog high on skag – ‘she probably crept under there for warmth” 😳😂

Fila tracksuits, Carmela’s matching outfits, Paulie’s shoes, Janice & Ralph sharing the dildo.

Yes, the intervention was great.

The Soprano’s is the only series that sees it through right till the end, the way the final scene plays out is brilliant. The final series of the Wire was rushed and under resourced but they both share the crown IMHO.

Has anyone seen the Spike Lee film ‘Clockers’? People have mentioned ‘Homicide, life on the street’ and ‘Oz’ as influencers but ‘Clockers’, which came out in 1995 looks like a cross between the Wire and the Soprano’s. You could take entire scenes from the film and tell people they were out takes from either series, it’s only the fact that they share so many actors that the game would be given away.

Clockers was written by Richard Price, who went on to write for The Wire.

TV is reducing the output of Richard Price and George Pelecanos, two authors that I really enjoy reading.

If you like The Wire their books are great.

I’ve read the book of Clockers, a long time ago – I remember it being great. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the film. Will check out George Pelecanos stuff too, thanks.

Question about the West Wing: we’re about halfway through S2 and frankly it’s dragging quite a lot. S1 was good, in a kinda fluffy way, and I keep hearing it’s an amazing series overall, but when does it get better than S2 again?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the West Wing. I’ve seen it end-to-end maybe three times, and still watch loads of ad-hoc episodes when they’re on Sky. The characters are all excellent (bar an exception below), you really fall in love with them.

However Series 1 and 2 suffer a bit from the “we’ll all sit on the stoop and have a beer and talk about how America is great” sappy ending to each episode. And they have the Mandy character, who is just crap (not the actress, the character).

Overall though, the problem with it now is that it’s the politics that have dated; when it came out, politics was ‘reasonably’ honorable, and you could believe that everyone involved was trying to do the right thing for the common good (however they themselves defined what the right thing was, and there’s some great debates in the program between the left and right political wings). The Matt Santos character from later series was literally based on Barack Obama, at the time a young, charismatic, relatively junior politician.

Politics is now so utterly poisonous that the show now seems overly idealistic and contrived, which is a shame on many, many levels.

Politics is now so utterly poisonous that the show now seems overly idealistic and contrived,

I watched the first season, it was an ok show, but it was very contrived – a liberal’s dreamy fantasy about how politics works.

Yeah, that’s what I thought about S1 at the time too.

And I’m not that jaundiced about politics compared to some these days.

a liberal’s dreamy fantasy about how politics works.

I think it’s more about how politics could work, so an idealised version of the politics at the time, which given what’s happened since makes it seem like fantasy.

The characters are still great though. And wouldn’t anyone wish for a President like Bartlett at the moment?

Chase discusses the movie on that podcast mentioned earlier.

Young Tony is played by Gandolfini’s son!

cant wait for it either, but in fairness all 86 episodes were like movies anyway – it will be like an extra length episode!

I really hope it’s good. The Deadwood film was a bit flat.

Supposedly Tony isn’t the lead character, it centres around Dickie Moltisanti (Christopher’s Dad) who is mentioned a lot in the series, but never seen. Molti Santi is Italian for ‘Many Saints’.

makes sense as Tony is only a minor figure until much later in the timeline. Hopefully though they include the often talked-about scene where he and Jackie Aprile knock over the high-stakes poker game!

an idealised version of the politics at the time

This was back when Newt Gingrich and the Clinton impeachment was still very fresh in everyone’s mind. Nobody succeeds in politics by being hopelessly idealistic, but the partisanship back then had already grown very toxic. The West Wing was pretty naive, even by the standards of when it was made.

Just seeing her picture makes my blood pressure spike.

The best character in television history pic.twitter.com/8dAstfZ3zF

— Zara Rahim (@ZaraRahim) February 27, 2021