The Sopranos. Season 1 [DVD]

Episode of Series “The Sopranos”.
The first season of the multi-Emmy Award winning series which brilliantly portrays the everyday lives of a New Jersey crime family. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), though ostensibly in the Waste Management business is really one of the heads of a large Mafia family. When the series begins he is disturbed by the on-set of a mid-life crisis in which the arrival of a nest of ducks in the family swimming pool precipitates dizzy-spells and increasingly disturbing dreams. He begins secret sessions with a psychiatrist, played by Lorraine Bracco, in which he slowly divulges the issues in his life. They include dealing with the suspicions of his intelligent Catholic wife, Carmella (Edie Falco); the traumas of seeing his daughter, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), leave adolescence behind and prepare for College; and his concerns with his slacker son, Anthony Junior (Robert Iler). On top of this he has to deal with the constant undermining by his tough-bitch mother (Nancy Marchand) and the wheeling and dealing of his uncle, Junior (Dominic Chianese). Its only when he is with his “boys”, the “capos” that form his Mafia Crew - Paulie (Tony Sirico), Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) - that Tony can relax. But even then, business always intrudes … With a consistently brilliant cast, tough and witty writing and a complex examination of materialism and contemporary American society, “The Sopranos” manages to create an ambiguous moral epic out of its study of power, corruption and money. Violent and uncompromising, the series delivers a narrative sweep that has the breadth of the classical nineteenth century novel but its language, vision and cynicism plants it firmly in the twenty-first. Created by David Chase and featuring direction by noted independent directors such as Nick Gomez, “The Sopranos” deserves the acclaim heaped upon it. In its moral complexity, insight and daring it leaves the products of the Hollywood motion picture industry for dead.