During my 19-year stint as theatre critic of The National Post, I sometimes wandered off into neighbouring cultural territories. Music was one; television – especially television drama – another. I was a fan of The Sopranos almost from the first season; I say “almost” since I only started watching it after reading about it in a Post column by Robert Fulford. He made it sound exciting, so I binge-watched the first – and that point only – season. I was hooked. As were, I may add, the rest of my family. (Well, The Sopranos was a family show, on more than one level.) We waited hungrily for each succeeding season.

The hunger grew especially intense for the last batch which arrived in 2006, a full two years after its predecessor. So I requested and was granted a sneak preview of the new opening episode, and wrote about it. This final season, however, incorporated its own agonising delay. The first seven episodes were screened in 2006; for the remaining nine we had to wait until 2007. And as far as I, and I’m sure many others, were concerned, those 2007 shows were the real last season. I suggested to my editors that I review each one of them, week by week, episode by episode; and they agreed. It didn’t work out exactly as planned; some weeks there wasn’t room in the paper, so two episodes had to be crammed into one column. In general, though, it turned out to be one of the most rewarding assignments I’ve had. I was able to go into detail about what seemed to me, as to many others, the best-written and best-acted TV series – certainly the best American TV series – ever. (Though there was a challenger on the horizon; see my writings on The Wire.)

Anyway, the Sopranos reviews led to my being appointed the Post’s TV critic, while still remaining the regular theatre reviewer. It was hectic but it was fun while it lasted, and the time it lasted happened to coincide with a television drama golden age. So here, with binge-watching having returned for so many of us – with a vengeance – are my collected Sopranos reviews, right up to the show’s controversial last instalment, which so many found frustrating at the time but which now seems the only logical way to have gone.

The Collected Reviews of
The Sopranos

in chronological order