David Chase on why he wrote The Sopranos: ‘I needed help. I needed therapy’
As his mobster-in-therapy masterpiece is named the best TV of the century, its creator says he was just thrashing out his own issues with his domineering, suffocating mother
- The 100 best TV shows of the 21st century
The first image David Chase had in mind for the show that became The Sopranos was a closeup of Tony Soprano opening his eyes, “waking up for the day”. That scene ended up falling later in the pilot. The opening scene, as any of the show’s superfans will happily inform you, watches Tony eyeing up a sculpture in a therapist’s waiting room with baffled rage. The show is 20 years old this year, and if that makes you feel ancient, “think how I feel,” says creator David Chase, who, at 74, is ferocious looking, with beady black eyes and the intense, long-suffering air of the protagonist whose name has become synonymous with his own.
If The Sopranos was groundbreaking at its debut two decades ago, it now occupies an even rarer category: a show that has become more admired and beloved with time. The Guardian has named The Sopranos the best TV show of the century so far, and its influence continues to be felt across viewing platforms that didn’t exist at the time of its conception. The prestige TV series, which unspools like a Russian novel but engages like a telenovela, set the tone for the boom in high-quality binge-programming – funny, smart, acutely well-observed and immensely addictive – that has reinvented the form.