Earlier this summer, whole continents of newsprint, whole atmospheres of airspace, were turned over to appreciations of the genius of George Lucas, who pared down film narrative to timeless archetypal elements and produced the spiffing entertainment that is Star Wars. Then Episode I - The Phantom Menace appeared, and all those good-versus-evil lightsabre fights turned out to be kinda boring. In the nick of time comes Mafia-drama The So- pranos (Channel 4, Thursdays), to remind us that the most engaging stories don't wear their archetypes on their sleeves.
Oh, The Sopranos is a classic tale, all right, complete with quests for identity and morally weighty struggles. But it's played out with utterly human complexity, in a particularly fascinating simulacrum of the real world (also known as northern New Jersey).
Which is where I declare my interest: you know that big waterfall where the mob guys bring some poor schmuck for a walk-and-talk in the first episode? That's in Paterson, my home town. You know when Tony Soprano tells his shrink "what part of the boot" his family comes from? That's Avellino, my Granpa's home place. The Sopranos is on my turf, asshole, and if anyone's gonna write about it . . .
What? You mean you don't even know about The Sopranos? For the last month, savvy Channel 4 viewers have soaked up what critic Stephen Holden in the New York Times calls the most important work of US pop culture of the last quarter-century. (His pick for the previous quarter? The Godfather flicks, whaddelse?) This is the show that scooped 10 million US viewers a week and definitively put what was originally a cable-movie service, HBO, up there with the broadcast big boys.
Not that The Sopranos - low-ish on graphic violence, considering the subject - resembles any network offering. As its creator, David Chase, puts it: "Network TV is about people talking and communicating and coming out with a resolution at the end. With The Sopranos, people talk to each other and they really aren't communicating. That's what happens in life. We're all kind of speaking the wrong language."
In The Sopranos, much of that "wrong language" would be too ripe for the networks. This show makes a credible case for replacing "Garden State" on the New Jersey licence plate with "F**k Dis S**t". When Tony stormed off screaming "F**k you! F**k you!" at his psychiatrist, and was then seen settling down cosily for his next session, I finally had some evidence to show sceptical Irish friends that this is really a normal mode of communication. Language notwithstanding, Tony (as played sublimely by James Gandolfini) is not your typical mob guy. Niggled by doubts and fears of mortality, and with the help of the shrink and the Prozac, his methods are changing. In episode four, when war looms with his truly malevolent Uncle Junior - the perfect moniker to sum up a life of frustration and being sidelined - Tony takes a leaf from an "Elder Care" bestseller recommended by Dr Melfi and makes "the old bastard" feel important, nominating Junior as the (nominal) new boss.
Tony's troubles are not simply personal. His own transition occurs in - is governed by - a world that's flush with transitions. They affect both his "families": in the mob, lines of command are blurred, guys are grassing to the Feds or selling their stories to Hollywood, "the book is closed" when it comes to "making" new wiseguys; at home, children Meadow and Anthony Jr are adolescing, while wife Carmela cultivates respectability and a dodgy relationship with Father Phil. Meanwhile, his mother (Nancy Marchand) has just entered a "retirement community", though her nasty streak is by no means retired, and coked-up nephew Christopher (manic Michael Imperioli) has got a serious respect deficit.
In all this and more The Sopranos is unmistakably of the 1990s. Hulking 4x4 vehicles are ubiquitous; Tony Jr learns about Dad's business on a website; Carmela (Edie Falco, perfect) takes undisguised, Oprah-fied delight in the fact that Tony's in therapy. (She doesn't know the doc is a woman, and Lorraine Bracco at that.) "I think many Americans feel this way," the shrink comments vaguely when Tony describes his sense of purposelessness, of having missed out on earlier, more heroic good times.
Unlike the superficially similar Analyze This, last year's comedy which Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal strolled through as gangster and shrink respectively, The Sopranos is genuinely funny.
For genre connoisseurs, the characters' relationship to the classic mafia depictions are a particular delight. "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in," says the character played by Steve Van Zandt (yeah, him from Springsteen's E Street Band). "Is dat Pacino or is dat Pacino?" On hearing of someone being shot in the eye, the guys immediately discuss the semiotics of such killings as revealed in the movies: "A Moe Greene job - you know, in One . . ." And as unctious Father Phil watches DVD movies with Carmela, he quizzes her about favourites: "How does Tony rate Goodfellas?"
At 13 episodes, The Sopranos is only half the length and way more than twice as good as a normal US television series. Thankfully, there are still a couple of months to get with the picture this time 'round, and a second series is back in Jersey, shooting. Bang bang - it's a hit.
The Sopranos is on Channel 4 on Thursday nights