There will be a great many people, first in the US, then elsewhere across the globe, wondering exactly how they are going to spend the hours they once gave over to the life and times of Tony Soprano, after HBO aired the final episode of the eponymous gangster series last night.
I am not one of those hanging on for the final act, although I wish I were. I watched the first few episodes of the Sopranos when it first aired in the UK in 1999, but a combination of children, long hours, a long commute and a wife who doesn't really like television means I haven't watched nearly as much of it as I would have liked to. It's on my list of things to watch when I retire.
What the Sopranos has done in recent years is lead the bulldozer of US television drama straight through the myth that Americans cannot make decent television and through the edifice of UK self-delusion that held that the world's best television was made here. In a trend that I believe started with NYPD Blue (a colleague thinks it began with another Dennis Franz classic, Hill Street Blues) the US networks have, year-on-year, filled our television screens with magnificent, compelling, multi-layered and action-packed dramas: The X Files, Homicide, ER, House, CSI, Six Feet Under, the new Battlestar Galactica, 24 and Lost to name just a few.
As I don't watch too much TV I am generally reliant on the recommendations of others, and was grateful that two friends recently pointed me in the direction of The Wire, a show that has been around a fair bit in the US, but has been tucked away on cable/satellite in the UK and has only managed to win a sort of cult following.
I bought the DVD of the first series on recommendation and have not regretted it for a moment. The Wire is produced and written by David Simon, the husband of Laura Lippman, who also produced Homicide: Life on the Street. Like that show it is set in Baltimore, and at its heart is the constant battle the authorities face in holding back the tide of drugs that threaten to overrun the city and destroy thousands of young (predominantly) black lives.
And it is terrific. Complex, slick, compassionate, beautifully written and utterly compelling. Another astonishing piece of television. As David Simon says, The Wire is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how... whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to".
If you haven't found it yet, then get it now, you'll not regret it. It might even help you through the Sopranos blues.
