The Sopranos Creator Has No Hope In Modern TV Industry: ‘It Is a Funeral’

Summary:

• The Sopranos, created by David Chase, changed television by bringing big budgets, detailed scripts and more freedom to the industry.
• David Chase believes that modern television is returning to the pre-Sopranos era, taking the path of simplification to please viewers.
• Many viewers disagree, believing that the golden era began not with The Sopranos, but with True Detective, after the release of which big actors in TV series became commonplace.

The Sopranos became the first show on a pay cable channel to surpass the number of viewers for shows on free-to-air channels.

The saga of the New Jersey gangsters marked the beginning of the era of quality television and the dominance of HBO.

The Sopranos Changed the Landscape of Television

The Sopranos ushered in a new era of television with high budgets, detailed scripts, high production costs and, most importantly, a much greater degree of freedom.

Violence, sex scenes, obscene language, and anything else the public channels could not afford flourished on cable, and in the end, as Game of Thrones has shown, it turned out to be the best-selling product.

At the forefront of this television revolution was David Chase, an Italian-American from New Jersey who had been working in television for more than two decades and was equally willing to take on any project that came his way.

In 1996, producer Brillstein-Grey Entertainment hired him to write a script for a TV version of The Godfather.

And then Chase remembered the plot of the movie, he came up with a few years earlier: a gangster makes an appointment with a psychotherapist. That’s how The Sopranos was born.

TV Industry Is Going Back to Where It Was, Says David Chase

Now the man who organized a TV revolution has neither hope nor sympathy for modern television.

According to Chase, the TV industry is moving toward simplification, citing the example of how he was asked to "dumb down" a show about a high-end escort.

Chase said that executives of streaming companies should bear a large portion of the responsibility:

“Audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus. And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were. [...] So, it is a funeral.”

TV Industry Has Indeed Changed, But Not for The Worst

Many viewers, however, disagree with Chase and believe that the golden age of television began not with The Sopranos, but with True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.

After its release, top actors were no longer afraid to leave film for television – once considered a sign of a fading career, a series with a major star in the lead is now a common occurrence.

At the same time, the number of series produced in the last decade has increased significantly, which of course has affected the average quality, but it has also allowed for the emergence of a significant number of truly magnificent series with a thoughtful and complex plot, such as The White Lotus, Severance, and The Bear.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter