Like Hollywood, the small screen has its Golden Age eras.
The first happened in the ’50s with anthology dramas and the tube’s rapid adoption. The second happened around the turn of the century, starting in 1999.
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Marked by more serious storytelling, the New Golden Age also gave us the antihero. From Bryan Cranston’s Walter White in Breaking Bad and Jon Hamm’s Don Draper in Mad Men, to Michael K. Williams’ Omar Little in The Wire and Laura Linney’s Wendy Byrde in Ozark, audiences could not get enough of a baddie with main-character energy.
View this post on InstagramSo, it’s no wonder the aforementioned series are mentioned in a new list ranking the greatest dramas to ever grace the small screen. Published this month on Collider, “The 50 Greatest Dramas of All Time, Ranked,” celebrates the shows that are “broadly definable as dramas — while often crossing into other genres, too — and providing excellent entertainment over multiple years.”
With mentions of newer series like Slow Horses, Yellowstone, and The Pitt, the outlet also throws some love to the nostalgic series that raised us. See: My So-Called Life, Angel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But its entire top five is dedicated to the antihero.
At No. 5, there is Succession, a fictional family drama inspired by the Murdochs. No. 4 is Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s “enthralling” peek inside the 1960s advertising industry. At No. 3, you have Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan’s “legendary” meth saga, and at No. 2, The Wire, David Simon's “compelling” crime classic.
The top spot goes to The Sopranos. Reinventing Sunday nights, creator David Chase’s HBO hit series was must-see TV.
View this post on InstagramStarring James Gandolfini as New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano, the show “is a thrilling, sad, funny, thought-provoking, and tense show, and only gets better with age, as well as with every rewatch,” Collider writes. “It's not just TV at its best; you could argue that The Sopranos is quite simply fiction in general at its very best.”
The first cable show ever nominated for Best Drama at the Emmys, per The Hollywood Reporter, it was also the first to win the award. The series would go on to win seven Emmys and the Writers Guild of America’s highest honor for work in television.
Per the outlet, “Vulture described The Sopranos as ‘the Citizen Kane of TV.’ The Guardian called it ‘the best TV show of the century so far.’ The New York Times submitted that ‘it just may be the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter-century.’ And the Writers Guild of America in 2013 ranked it No. 1 on its list of the 101 best-written TV series of all time.”
That is a massive brag sheet. Another group it was a hit with? Real-life mobsters. According to Mental Floss, the show was so accurate in its misdeeds that the mafia thought producers had an informant on the inside.
“FBI agents told The Sopranos’ creative team that on Monday mornings all anyone could talk about was The Sopranos,” MF writes. “And on the wire taps they'd collected from the weekend, that's all the real-life mobsters could talk about as well.”
In a 2012 interview with Vanity Fair, producer Terence Winter said, "We would hear back that real wiseguys used to think that we had somebody on the inside. They couldn't believe how accurate the show was."
Running from 1999 to 2007, the series unfolded over six seasons -- the last of which was split into two parts spanning 21 episodes. The series finale, “Made in America” is arguably the most talked-about episode in TV history, with its ambiguous cut-to-black finish sending households into confusion.
Commenting on the finale’s 10 seconds of silence, Chase said, “I had no idea it would cause that much … of an uproar. What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? That bothered me.”
The Sopranos is streaming in its entirety on HBO Max.
Related: 1975 Classic Was a No. 1 Hit 50 Years Ago But Its Writer Despised It
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