David Chase calls The Sopranos‘ 25th anniversary a “funeral” for the golden age of TV
"Something is dying," Chase said in a recent interview, stating that TV is starting to get dumber again
Aux News The Sopranos
David Chase has suggested that fans of his work should consider the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos a “funeral” for the so-called golden age of TV, saying in a recent U.K. Times interview that “We’re going back to where we were” when he first started making TV. (Which is to say, a “shithole,” per a different part of the interview.) “Something is dying,” he added, in case you weren’t clear on the general vibe of where Chase was going with all this.
The series creator made these pronouncements as the world celebrates the 25th anniversary of the January 10, 1999 release of the pilot of The Sopranos, which swiftly helped elevate HBO from a movie channel with a handful of interesting TV projects kicking around in between airings of Blankman on its schedule into the home base for a whole new generation of prestige TV. Chase is careful not to take total credit for this transformation, acknowledging that the “25-year blip” of quality he’s mourning in these recent interviews encompasses “a lot of other hugely talented people out there who I feel increasingly bad for.”
Chase points, in part, to modern attention spans for the shift in current TV-making trends. “We are more into multitasking. We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus. And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.” He also noted that he recently tried to get a project about a high-end escort made, and was “told to dumb it down,” which is one of the most David Chase-ish sentences imaginable.
We would respectfully suggest to Chase—who, it’s probably worth noting, has struggled to ever find a second project that connected with audiences the way The Sopranos’ elevated mob drama managed to (including a tepid response to 2021's disappointing The Many Saints Of Newark—that the problem he’s bemoaning might have less to do with quality than volume: There’s just more TV being made now, at a significant level, than there was 25 years ago, and so it’s easier for quality shows like Barry, Reservation Dogs, or Succession to slip through the cracks. (The interviewer brings up Succession at one point, actually, but Chase pushes back because the series had been green lit all the way back in 2017.) Still, if we’re going to get doomsaying from an aging TV veteran, we could do a lot worse than Chase’s eternally caustic tongue; he notes at one point, of the TV execs of yesteryear, who turned the medium into “an artistic pit,” that, “I made them regret all their decades of stupidity and greed,” which is the sort of fire and brimstone pronouncement we can’t help but enjoy.
93 Comments
Well, funerals are celebrations so..Happy 25th anniversary Sopranos!
We got plenty of Ziti and Gabagool!
Don’t forget the johnnycakes. But sadly, no soft drinks of choice. Only Mr Pibb. ☹️
It’s just fat and nitrates!
Gabagool? Ova heah!
All the Sopranos are here to celebrate! Homer Soprano, Marge Soprano, Bart Soprano, fun fact I have never watched this show.
I thought it was about a choir with an aversion to low notes.
Clearly he missed the news about the upcoming Young Sheldon spinoff.
NCIS: Origins
NCIS: NurseryBaby Gibbs, Baby DiNozzo, Baby McGee
NCIS: Apocalypse. Every single naval officer has been killed and the world has fallen into ruins.
My parents say the same thing, but they’re in their 70s and only enjoy crime stories. Some of the brilliant shows of the past decade or so, such as Atlanta or Reservation Dogs, is utterly beyond them. Plus, they largely only seek out tv on linear and HBO.Theres still a whole world of great TV.
They have been lost to the silent killer. Addiction to Blue Bloods.
Created by two Sopranos writers.
Yep with a fair number of actors showing up at one point or another. The coppest of cop shows
I imagine that after this many years, Blue Bloods has just about tapped out that vein of copaganda. The next step would be to do a prequel series, where Selleck is still a beat cop on the verge of making detective, his dad is still commissioner, and the kids are still kids or young adults.
Only if they did it with the same actors, and we just had to pretend they were two or so decades younger, like Wet Hot American Summer: First Day at Camp.
I don’t think that Selleck is up to it. My wife likes the show and watches it. She’s noticed that Tom shoots most of his scenes seated lately.
With lovely storylines about Civil Rights and those dirty hippies who ruined Vietnam.
I think that would have to go back to Grandpa as a cop, then. Selleck as a cop would be, like, the late 1980s I think. Which would work for the viewing audience, getting all nostalgic for the run up to the Giuliani years.
That guy boy Reagan oh what a time!(The fact the main family is called Reagan has always made me snicker, come on guys be a bit subtle)
the Giuliani years.They should make that show. Present day deranged Giuliani narrating his time as mayor. Those poll workers deserve the money.
Tragically many people fall for the bait of sexy Magnum and end up dozing off in bed to a series of family dinner scenes. I heard in one episode, the DEA comes down hard on the family, and Tom Selleck has a booger in his mustache that no one tells him about for the entire day.
Your parents:
“How about we call it the errr…MATLOCK expressway?”
Same, my parents at 66 can now only be safely recommended crime shows or period dramas about english people. Everything else is “garbage”.
My parents (one of whom is in their 60’s and the other of whom is in their 70’s) also refuse to watch a lot of newer TV shows due to their inclusion of non-white and/or openly gay characters, which they constantly complain to me is “unnecessary” and “why do gay people always have to bring up that they’re gay?”
I don’t tell them about 98% of what I watch/read/play anymore, as I’m one of those people who actively seeks out diverse media.
At first glance, I thought this was David Lee Roth.
Dammit, now I can’t NOT see DLR in that picture.
So does that mean that *wasnt* the actual David Lee Roth in the Poker Game episode?
I thought it was Bill Murray, but Diamond Dave is way funnier
There was a Golden Age? TV has always been shit, my grandparents were right.But if we’re going to have it I’d say the opportunities to do something good have never been better.
Are you saying you weren’t aware that the period following the premiere of the Sopranos is referenced to as TV’s golden age, or are you saying sarcastically that you are aware, but consider it far from golden?Obviously everything wasn’t good. At the same time reality TV was ascending, as was Fox News. But there was a huge jump in quality. The quality shows were popular too. Maybe they weren’t doing American Idol numbers, but they were critically acclaimed, and launched several cable networks out of their high double-digit obscurity to prominence. AMC, Showtime, and FX all benefited from producing critically-acclaimed TV shows during this period.I remember what it was like before, and apart from The Simpsons, Seinfeld, the X-Files, and a few others, TV was a big steaming dump of formulaic sitcoms and hour long dramas.I don’t think opportunities to do good work are better now than in, say, 2005. There may be more opportunities in general, but the budgets are lower, and the network notes higher. The audience is more segmented, meaning that really great shows can get buried in the chaf. I was just saying the other day how a show like For All Mankind barely gets a mention in the media, despite being one of the best things on TV today.
That’s my feeling as well, though I do worry about the Zaslavification of television spreading further than WBD.
The era from (roughly) Oz to, oh, I don’t know, the first season of True Detective is pretty consistently held by critics as a period in which TV dramas took significant strides forward in terms of having levels of quality previously associate with film.
Right? The op is right in the sense that there always was and will be crap, but there was a solid, definable run abetted by tv on dvd (serialized arcs were a lot more viable) and the transition into streaming which brought on some really good storytelling not many people expected from tv.
I would also suggest that while more cinematic, the “Golden Age” shows hadn’t completely ditched the strengths of the medium of episodic TV. They used the episodic rhythm of TV, applied the generally higher quality associate with film, and created a generation of excellent work.I think that there is as much great TV now as there’s ever been, but I do agree with Chase that, on average, we’re reverting to a lower level of quality, but just because a higher volume of crap vastly outweighs the good stuff. But it’s a different kind of low quality than the pre-”Golden Age” era. What we get now are 8-10 hour movies, broken up randomly, with none of the episodic structure that writers of the past used as a shortcut to produce entertaining (if often bad) TV. In many ways, TV is headed into an era worse than what preceded the so-called Golden Age, because the longstanding shortcuts and tricks writers used to use to create bad-but-watchable TV have been all-but forgotten.
This is a great point. I re-watched Mad Men a bit ago and I was struck at how little of a season throughline there really was. Every episode (sometimes every scene, really) worked as its own mini-story. Of course they all added up to something more, but it was very different than the 10-hour movies you’re talking about.
In 2014, you could have seen Breaking Bad, Mad Men, season 1 of True Detective, season 1 of Fargo, Hannibal, Community, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Game of Thrones, Veep, The Americans, and The Leftovers. So you had a steady diet of shows that ranged in quality from Great to Maybe the Best Ever.I think equally important, the massive success of some of these shows seemed to briefly convince Hollywood that hugely ambitious, sophisticated programming was a great way to make money. So you had a even wider group of shows like The Affair or The Knick, which probably didn’t match the shows above in quality but represented real competition to do the next big prestige drama.
Dude, you made Not Fade Away. Sit down.
To clarify, Chase is not against pulpy TV. He likes the kind with some pulp. Just not this much.
There’s got to be a story behind the name change from “TROP5Ó”.
I tell ya, I’m inhalin’ this shit right now and it’ll go through ya like a dose of salts through a goose:
*throws phone*
I suppose it is dumb to watch a showing about the relatives of celebrities singing? I hate elite snobs like Chase.
That pumpkin’s gone all moldy and started to collapse, you can’t leave those things out til mid January.Oh wait, that’s David Chase.
The Golden Age of Television began with that episode of Frasier where Niles makes the half-court shot, and ended right afterwards.
I’M THE ONE WHO DRAINED IT FROM ALL THE WAY DOWNTOWN
Ugh, if there is one thing I tire of more than anything, it is some old proclaiming the Good Ole days are dying things were better, the Golden Age has ended. Bullshit. It’s called change. It’s neither good or bad, but always inevitable when it comes to art and entertainment.
And always built on the flimsy grounds of comparing the best thing of their era against the average or schlock of the era they’re whining about.
I normally agree, but the behavior typified by Zaslov which is being copied is extremely antithetical to any level of artistic quality and while I’m probably less of a doomer then Chase and acknowledge that good TV will always exist, it is increasingly requiring more digging then it used to and I am definitely hearing phrases like Peak TV come up less and less. The splintering of media into a quasi Streaming Wars also does no favors.
“I normally agree, but the behavior typified by Zaslov”
Oh, would you shut the fuck up?
This is nothing new. 25 years ago shows would be canceled with two of 22 episodes aired, and the rest NEVER AIR EVER. Literally EVER. There are hundreds and hundreds of hours of television that has NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO THE PUBLIC.
Jesus fucking Christ, you god damn people need to get a fucking grip.
Yep. I bristle at a lot of nostalgic thinking, but there are clear, measurable ways the business side of media is changing, and that affects what does and doesn’t get made, and what does and doesn’t get promoted or renewed, for that matter.
Yeah, in many ways it’s easier to say “It’s neither good or bad” but art DOES have better and worse eras that are easy to see in hindsight. It’s natural for art forms to have decades when they are just not flourishing like they used to, and it does feel like TV is heading there. The good news is it’s still in a much better state than film. Brilliant shows ARE being made, but it’s hard to call something like Rez Dogs a successful example when it’s officially cancelled after S3.Not that this site is the be all end all, but the pure decay of the AV Club shows how much less attention people are willing to give when it comes to critical thought about and around TV.I think video games, on the other hand, are in an exceptional era right now, so I don’t think I’m just a cranky doomer.
Sorry, but media just hasn’t been good since I was a young adult with a developing brain.
Right? Back in my day people didn’t complain so much about how things were better back in their day. It’s so annoying. I mean it’s on and on and on and on and on and like we get it.
Anyone who says there isn’t great TV anymore is either not watching TV, or they’re a one hit wonder whose lone success ended in a controversial gimmick that made people think their cable went out.TV is experiencing a renaissance of quality content, where writing, cinematography, performance,
I subscribe to YouTube TV and one of the random channels is the GET network. They have a bunch of shows from the 70s and 80s and once in a while I feel nostalgic and watch a couple of episodes of the old James Garner show The Rockford Files. I like it because it was filmed in L.A. (where I grew up) in the 70s, when I was in middle and high school.I must admit, many of the better episodes were written by David Chase. (We also look at Kojak every once in a while. Half of those episodes were written by Abby Mann, who created the show. Mann won an Academy Award for Judgement at Nurenberg, of all things. Leo Penn directed a bunch of them. It’s actually a pretty good show. I like seeing actors like James Woods turn up as a guest star before they became movie actors.)
There was an opportunity to make tons of great television during the streaming wars when companies were throwing money at content. Apparently, there aren’t enough good writers to go around. Can’t blame David Zaslav for everything.
Many Saints of Newark really made me re-assess Chase quite a bit. I really don’t understand how that turned out so very very badly
Chase wanted to make a movie focusing on the Newark riots. HBO/studio balked, wanted it to have a Sopranos-prequel angle. Many Saints is the result.
thank you that makes sense as to why the movie seems so unfocused and pointless. reassures me that maybe Chase hasn’t lost it entirely :)in theory maybe could’ve worked as a mini-series that dealt with both but i’m guessing studio notes would’ve continued to cause problems… and probably insisted on providing unnecessary backstories/explanations like in the Han Solo movie
I do think Many Saints would have worked extremely well as a limited series.
Old man yells at clouds, doesn’t realize his awesome series was paced like a slow moving glacier.
I absolutely do not know what you’re talking about, as someone who just watched The Sopranos for the first time this year. It was incredibly entertaining.
That whole take about attention spans is so tired, and also straight up incorrect. For all the freedom to mess with runtimes that streaming supposedly offers, TV runtimes haven’t really changed much; we’re still using the half hour comedy/one hour drama model for the most part. In fact, the whole concept of binge-watching, which didn’t exist when The Sopranos premiered, requires people to sit and pay attention to shows for hours at a time, and that’s widely popular. Meanwhile, attempts to make shows shorter have mostly flopped; just go ask Quibi how they’re doing these days.
In fact, the whole concept of binge-watching, which didn’t exist when
The Sopranos premiered, requires people to sit and pay attention to
shows for hours at a time, and that’s widely popular.
I would also add that episodes of streaming shows are usually longer too. Sure networks may allot 30/60 minute slots, but the episodes are more like 21/42 minutes, whereas on streaming it’s pretty close to that full 30 or 60 minutes (sometimes more).Not that this doesn’t have its own set of problems, but attention spans aren’t really a factor.
Counterpoint: Ted Lasso. Seriously, it was hitting close to 90 minute episodes towards the end of its run. It’s supposed to be a f***ing schmaltzy workplace comedy!!!
Season 3 reigned that in a bit, 2 was horrible with it.
I thought this was a problem with the recent Twilight Zone. I think they should’ve taken a lesson from the ‘80s show, which in its first 2 seasons aired in hour-long installments divided into 2-3 stories of different lengths, which allowed for a lot of flexibility in story length; some took almost the whole hour, some were short enough to fit between two commercial breaks. One of my favorites from that show was “A Small Talent for War”, which ran for only 8 minutes.
It’s not that shows are shorter it’s the way the episode unfolds over the run time. La Brea is a great example of something designed to be watched in between scrolling twitter/tik tok.
I cannot tell you how tired I am of the false “attention spans are shorter” nonsense. Whenever I hear it, I do the Liz Lemon eyeroll.
People hate long episodes of shows because of attention spans!Also the kids watch a 4 hour YouTube video about plagerism and love it!
This is not the first thing that’s been written about how TV (and movies) have changed in structure. It’s more common now for characters to provide exposition about things that have already happened in the episode because they know the audience is half-watching and scrolling. (I say “more common” but that’s vacuously true —- it didn’t happen at all before.)
Off the top of my head, reviews of Bright a few years ago discussed this at length because it was particularly egregious there. On TV, while I’m a big original-flavor Law and Order fan, the reboot is unwatchable. The trust of the mid-90s seasons in their audience is completely gone.His point isn’t that “TV is bad now.” He said “we’re going back to where we were,” which I think is accurate. There’s top tier TV, but there’s been a huge regression to the mean in terms of the quality of the average offering.
Babylon 5 would have characters recap things a lot because it was much harder for viewers to catch up on serialized shows back then.
But it wouldn’t recap things that had happened earlier in the same episode, which is the distinction I was making.
I think the problem isn’t that it might be true, more that execs are making decisions based on that conceit. The past couple seasons of The Witcher noticeably suffered from this.
There’s just more TV being made now, at a significant level, than there was 25 years ago, and so it’s easier for quality shows like Barry, Reservation Dogs or Succession to slip through the cracks.
You couldn’t cite a current show? All three shows have finished their runs.
Exactly. And Rez Dogs was unceremoniously cancelled after only three seasons. Hardly the example to cite of a healthy industry that respects good art.
Go to bed, David.
“The interviewer brings up Succession at one point, actually, but Chase pushes back because the series had been green lit all the way back in 2017.”
So Succession doesn’t count because it was greenlighted in 2017, and he has absolutely no idea what is being greenlighted now or how anything greenlighted now will fare with audiences or critics, but he’s happy to declare the golden age over?
Yeah, fuck off with that horseshit, old man. Go find a cloud to yell at.
This is a completely dumb take that just shows how out of touch Chase is. There is so much good TV every year – shows that are creative and smartly-written.
I think we won’t know if he’s right or not for a few years, because my take on his take is that a lot of that is probably coming to a close. What we are seeing now was greenlit years ago by this point.
I can’t imagine why someone made famous by his work at HBO is looking at the industry (and specifically HBO) and struggling to avoid depair when looking around the industry.
IMO, TV is better than it’s ever been. On cable and on streaming. Broadcast TV was almost always a cesspit, now it’s a mega cesspit. Also, another thing that’s massively better now than in any other part of the history TV is TV for young people/kids. Like, cartoons now are so much more in depth and developed than I ever recall in the 80’s or 90’s, and usually aren’t made just to peddle toys.
Hot take: Oz > The Sopranos
Well no
I think the biggest problem is that we started seeing shows with the production value of prestige television with writing akin to something you’d find on CBS.
Not that Chase would talk to another dope from the A.V. Club, but say that to his face, idiot.
Maybe we’re just at the end of what mobsters can teach us. Now onto short order cooks.
He seems fun.