The Sopranos: Complete HBO Season 1 [1999] [DVD]

An excellent series charting the life of Mafiosa Tony Soprano as well as his family and associates. The gangster genre has undergone many different interpretations over the years, with the highlights being the obvious: Godfather, Once Upon A Time In America etc. However, it is about time a well-made, well-acted and ultimately realistic portrayal came to the small screen - and the Sopranos is it, without a shadow of a doubt. Gritty and violent, yet sardonic and sexy, this series is another fantastic import from HBO. Its popularity is well deserved, and despite some criticism in later series when the focus drifts onto secondary (and more annoying) characters, this first series heralded a new class of tv shows. Highly recommended.

The first season of The Sopranos starts off well and gets better and better with each episode. Rather than focussing solely on the mafia lifestyle, there's also a great deal of domestic drama, and it's interesting to see Tony Soprano (much like any other head of a family) trying to find a decent work/life balance. He has the demanding family at home, but also the demanding "family" in his day to day business dealings.
Overall the first season is a great introduction to a show that continued to get better and better for the next few seasons.
A very good starting point, and excellently written.

Well, I've heard arguments about which TV series is the best ever, and the two that keep being named are The Wire and The Sopranos. Personally I can't pick a winner, they're both outstanding in their different ways. This is the first time I've seen either of them in Blu-Ray however, and it makes for a worthwhile bonus for something that, of its kind, is nigh-on perfect. Even its flaws are lovable.

This is the first series from 1999, made up of 13 episodes:-

The Sopranos (Disc 1)
46 Long (Disc 1)
Denial, Anger, Acceptance (Disc 1)
Meadowlands (Disc 2)
College (Disc 2)
Pax Soprana (Disc 2)
Down Neck (Disc 3)
The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti (Disc 3)
Boca (Disc 3)
A Hit is a Hit (Disc 4)
Nobody Knows Anything (Disc 4)
Isabella (Disc 4)
I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano (Disc 5)

These episodes come on five separate discs - note that if renting from Lovefilm, and possibly elsewhere, one disc gets you three episodes on each of the first four discs but only one episode on the fifth. So you might need to order all five separately in order to see the whole of Season 1 which is the best part of 12 hours long in total - and of course, there are no commercial breaks!

For those who may recently have been rescued from a decade on a desert island, this is an occasionally violent and foul-mouthed drama/comedy built around the stresses and strains of New Jersey 'don' Tony Soprano, although the life of organised crime is a lot less exotic now than in the days of Omerta and the cinematic icons the characters openly adore. These days, there is no such thing as a code of silence, people will grass on others to lower their prison sentences, and generally speaking nothing about this lifestyle is remotely glamourous - which is of course as it should be and how it undoubtedly is in reality. In the case of Tony Soprano, he struggles to maintain his sanity in a world in which he has to balance ordinary family life with organised hits and the many various problems he faces as a mob boss. Right from the start, Tony Soprano seeks psychiatric help from a therapist played by Lorraine Bracco, well-known for a slightly different role a decade earlier in Goodfellas. It's high-quality soap opera, with an excellent script and direction.

Having only seen this in Blu-Ray I can only guess at the improvement over SD but I found it instantly better than expected, seeing as it was filmed before Blu-Ray existed. The facial close-ups displayed the superior picture quality at its best, with every pore and follicle clear and distinct. A TV series as good as this doesn't need high-definition to entertain, so this is icing on the cake.

Audio soundtrack options are:-

English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish DTS 2.0
Castellano DTS 2.0
French DTS 2.0
German DTS 2.0

While subtitles can be set in several languages:-

English, English SDH, Spanish, Castellano, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese

There cannot be much doubt about it - The Sopranos is as good as it gets for home TV entertainment for those with a liking for mafia-related drama spiced with a dash of real humour. In fact, it's a must-have, and if you haven't seen it yet, then you're in for a real treat. Get the whole set - and don't stop there, get all six seasons while you're at it. 86 episodes in all, of top-notch gangster nirvana.