This doco is a deep dive into television’s most groundbreaking show

Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos
★★★★★
Binge, September 8

American mobster drama The Sopranos, which began 25 years ago this year, inspired a new generation of cinematic-style television, but as this fascinating two-part documentary from director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room) reveals, it began with low expectations.

David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, opens up to director Alex Gibney.Credit: HBO/Binge

Gibney sits down with creator David Chase – in a set created to look like the office of the show’s psychiatrist, Dr Melfi – to discuss the writer-director’s background, both personal and professional; before The Sopranos, Chase, who grew up in New Jersey, had been a writer on shows such as The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure. But his dream had been to write a feature film; his original plan for The Sopranos was a film starring Robert De Niro and Anne Bancroft.

In the first episode – both are almost 90 minutes long – Chase discusses the inspiration behind the show’s characters, with particular emphasis on Livia (the late Nancy Marchand), the manipulative, gaslighting and ultimately murderous heart of the series. Livia was, essentially, Chase’s mother. What a thing to reveal.

When The Sopranos first aired, there was nothing else like it on television.

A series following a mobster suffering from mental health issues whose mother plots to kill him was not your standard TV fare, but it swiftly became one of the greatest television series in history. Chase was rejected by the major networks, before trying his luck at HBO. (As star and later co-writer Michael Imperioli says of HBO at the time, “it was kind of the bargain basement of TV”). Chase was determined to create something “blatantly uncommercial”. Which he did – until the series became a cultural phenomenon.

The biggest risk, aside from a cast of relatively unknown actors (Steve Van Zandt, from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, had never even acted before), was having a killer, the ultimate antihero, as the lead. As Chase puts it, this made the audience, as well most of the show’s characters, “make a pact with the devil”.

Tony Sirico was aged 55 and sleeping on a fold-out bed at his “ma’s house” when he was cast in The Sopranos.Credit: AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

Chase talks about different storylines (many drawn from real-life anecdotes from his and the writers’ own lives), his choice of locations and shooting style; he used techniques usually reserved for feature films, and name checks Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey among others as inspiration.

When it went to air in January 1999, nobody was confident that people would watch a show with so much violence, swearing and nudity – but within three weeks it became the ultimate water-cooler TV (this was before everyone carried their own two-litre bottles of water).

Gibney weaves in scenes from the show, and there are interviews with Chase’s co-writers and actors Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco and Drea de Matteo, and early auditions tapes.

He addresses the troubles that came later in the series. James Gandolfini, who struggled with addiction, would often not show up, and regularly threatened to quit, but everyone had great affection for him. There are fun insights and anecdotes – perhaps best of all the one about the late Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Walnuts: nobody was allowed to touch his trademark hair, which he would spend hours combing before shooting.

If you haven’t watched The Sopranos, be warned: major spoilers abound, in particular around the series’ dramatic final scene. And for those who know? No, Chase will not be drawn on that much-discussed ending.

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