The Sopranos ushered in the so-called Golden Age of Television™ — when the artistry and storytelling on the small screen began to catch up with, and in some cases exceed, that of film.
But the series’ creator, David Chase, seems to think the 25th anniversary of his landmark show marks the death of TVs much-hyped golden age, despite evidence to the contrary.
“Yes, this is the 25th anniversary, so of course it’s a celebration,” Chase recently told The Sunday Times. “But perhaps we shouldn’t look at it like that. Maybe we should look at it like a funeral.”
Chase went on to call the era of TV that gave us acclaimed modern classics such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men a “25-year blip.”
The writer and director, who started out working on network television before jumping ship to HBO, where he was free of the pressure of ad dollars, declared that TV is “going back to where I was.’
“Back then the networks were in an artistic pit. A sh–hole,” Chase recalled. “The process was repulsive. In meetings these people would always ask to take out the one thing that made an episode worth doing. I should have quit.”
With The Sopranos, Chase thought he had made the networks “regret all their decades of stupidity and greed,” but now, he said, streamers are going to have commercials, too.
“And I’ve already been told to dumb it down,” the 78-year-old visionary added, referring to a show he tried to make with A Teacher writer and creator Hannah Fidell about a high-end prostitute forced into witness protection. Chase said they’ve been told the “unfortunate truth” that their treatment is too complicated.
He continued, “Who is this all really for? I guess the stockholders?”
Chase also blames “multitasking” and the universal addiction to smartphones. “We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things,” he said, “so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention, and requires an audience to focus.”
“So it is a funeral,” Chase concluded. “Something is dying.”
Chase has a point. But then again, that 25-year golden age of television was incredibly white — white male antiheroes literally getting away with murder. Now there are still great TV shows, but the protagonists look different and therefore the stories are different, while the storytelling remains, usually, up to high standards. Otherwise, why would movie stars be flocking to the small screen in droves?
Of course, The Sopranos didn’t have to contend with reality shows when it first premiered on Jan. 10, 1999. Or social media, or smartphones, or any of the myriad things that distract us and whittle away at what’s left of our attention spans. Back then, the 24-hour news cycle was still a new thing, and comfort-viewing — consuming mindless content as an escape from the real world’s harsh complexities — wasn’t as much of a necessity.
So maybe the golden age of television is dead. But at least we have The Gilded Age. And thank god for that — and, as usual — for Christine Baranski.
