Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1044 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-11-24
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Dutch, Romanian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 696 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television seriesThe Sopranos is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home. This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegiate mob clan and his own nouveau-riche brood.

The brilliant first series is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his midlevel capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.

Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.

The first year's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what's not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland

DVD Description
Episodes:

• The Sopranos
  
• 46 Long
  
• Denial, Anger, Acceptance
  
• Meadowlands
  
• College
  
• Pax Soprano
  
• Down Neck
  
• Tennessee Moltisante
  
• Boca
  
• A Hit Is A Hit
  
• Nobody Knows Anything
  
• Isabella
  
• Jeanne Cusamano

Special Features

• Audio commentary on Episode One
  
• Interview with creator David Chase by Peter Bogdanovich
  
• 2 behind the scenes featurettes

DVD Technical Information:

• Total running time: 754 mins
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77 Anamorphic Wide Screen
  
• Audio: Dolby Digital
  
• Languages: English, French
  
• Subtitles: Dutch, English, English for the hearing impaired, Finnish, French, Norwegian, Romanian, Swedish

Customer Reviews

Another superb US import
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.

Just when I thought I was out...
they puuulll me back in!

Back in your chair to watch the rest of the Sopranos, that is!

This first season of the Sopranos is a real beauty. A great cast (unbelievable acting-debute of Steven Van Zandt!). Great music (Tindersticks e.g.). Great cinematography (little spoiler: Tony's first attack). Great script and quotes. And the necessary humor.

This great show comes in a 4-disk dvd-box. The box-art is really nice. There are some extra's (audio comment of the director for the pilote, an interview with the director,..) but not very much. And maybe also good to know if you're non-UK: there are subtitles for most European languages.

unbelievably good
I heard talk of 'The Sopranos' when it first appeared on British TV but thought the title too daft for it to be worth looking at. More fool me. I have all the series now, 1-5, and am frequently staggered by the brilliance of the enterprise, and how it has unfolded and developed. I lent Series 1 to a friend ; he rather shamefacedly told me later that he had sat down to watch the first episode in a morning and, totally transfixed, watched the whole series right through. It gets you that way, and I can't think of much else that does. A modern classic.