25 Ways ‘The Sopranos’ Changed TV Forever

HBO's legendary mafia drama The Sopranos is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its premiere. To mark this milestone, we've compiled a list of 25 ways The Sopranos changed TV forever.

1. It allowed the bad guy to be the main character.

There had never before been a main character as antiheroic as Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). He was a truly groundbreaking protagonist, because he was an objectively terrible person rendered in three-dimensional complexity, which had never been done on TV before. 

2. It made it safe for main characters to kill people in cold blood.

One specific antiheroic act stands above all the others and has to be singled out. The influence of Tony's vengeful, bare-handed murder of an informant (while he was taking his daughter on a college tour, no less) in the Season 1 episode "College" cannot be overstated. Before this, TV protagonists did not murder people in cold blood. After this, all bets were off.

3. It Introduced truly cinematic qualities to television.

The Sopranos brought a level of quality to its writing, acting, and filmmaking that had previously only been seen in movies. TV had never achieved this level of emotional and psychological depth, the thematic subtlety or the complex symbolism before The Sopranos. 

4. It turned HBO into the standard-bearer for quality.

Along with Sex and the City (and to a lesser extent Oz, its first original drama), The Sopranos turned HBO into TV's main destination for groundbreaking, boundary-pushing television.

5. It inspired other networks to get into the scripted drama game.

Other networks that followed HBO into the high-quality drama series about an antihero genre include FX (The Shield), AMC (Mad Men and Breaking Bad) and Showtime (Dexter). Many years later, Netflix followed a similar playbook when it got into the scripted drama business with House of Cards. 

6. It made it impossible for broadcast shows to win Drama Series Emmys.

The Sopranos was the first premium cable series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Since then, broadcast dramas struggle to compete in that category, with the last series taking the trophy being 24 in 2006.

7. It helped cable attract talent regular TV couldn't.

The Sopranos' creative achievements helped make HBO a destination for movie stars looking to try TV, like Al Pacino in Angels in America and Tom Hanks with Band of Brothers. 

8. It Introduced actors who are still around today.

Like Edie Falco (who went on to win more Emmys for Nurse Jackie), Michael Imperioli (who recently was part of another era-defining hit in The White Lotus), and Drea de Matteo (who's been in dozens of shows and movies since she played Adriana La Cerva). 

9. It Introduced writers who went on to have hits of their own 

Like Matthew Weiner (Mad Men), Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire, Tulsa King) and Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess (Blue Bloods). 

10. It gave TV a license to push the envelope in terms of shocking content.

The Sopranos' explicit violence, sex and language led to subsequent shows trying to top each other (and themselves) for how graphic they could be. 

11. It led to more idiosyncratic, personal projects getting made.

Only creator David Chase could have made The Sopranos, because it was so specifically focused on the things he's interested in. Without him showing it could be done, there would be no Mad Men, no Atlanta, no Yellowstone or dozens of other TV shows with distinctive authorial voices.

12. It made tracksuits cool.

A don doesn't wear shorts, but he does wear FILA! 

13. It introduced the wider world to a whole new Italian American vocabulary.

Marone! 

14. It made it safe to shoot TV shows in off-the-beaten-path locations.

The Sopranos shot on-location in New Jersey at a time when most shows were primarily shot on soundstages (to be fair, The Sopranos filmed in-studio, too). 

15. It was ahead of its time about mental health.

Mental health is an ever-present topic of cultural conversation these days, but it wasn't talked about as much when The Sopranos came out. And while the concept of a mobster in therapy is funny, the show takes the therapeutic process seriously. 

16. It showed TV's most complex mother-son relationship to date.

Speaking of mental health, Tony's relationship with his deeply unwell mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) was a source of fascinating drama in the show's early seasons. The same way that there had never been a main character so antiheroic, there had never been a mother so unloving.

17. It changed the way TV is covered by the media.

Critics like Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz, who wrote for the show's hometown paper the Newark Star-Ledger while the show was on, met the show's quality with excellent criticism of their own. "I feel like the explosion in TV criticism inspired by shows like [The Sopranos] wound up enhancing the experience for viewers who wanted to dig deeper than what they got from watching alone," Sepinwall said in an interview with Den of Geek.

18. It revolutionized shorter seasons.

The Sopranos did 13-episode seasons in a time when 20+ episode seasons were the norm. Now 13 episodes is a lot of episodes, and the standard season length for high-quality shows is closer to eight. 

19. It revolutionized long breaks between seasons.

The Sopranos famously took well over a year between seasons later in its run, which was highly unusual at the time but commonplace now. 

20. It showed dramas could be funnier than comedies.

The Sopranos is one of the funniest shows of all time. Many of its most quotable lines are jokes. Its influence can be seen in other hilarious dramas like Succession.

21. It gave early career opportunities to actors who would go on to be big stars.

Paul Dano, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Lady Gaga are among the people who appeared on The Sopranos before they were famous.

22. It helped make DVD sales a big business.

When The Sopranos was on in the early 2000s, DVD box sets were revolutionizing how people consumed TV, introducing millions to the binge model. The Sopranos was one of the top sellers.

23. It showed a new way for TV shows to evolve stylistically and thematically. 

Season 3 was drastically different from the previous two seasons. The first two were more straightforward mob dramas, but Season 3 took a detour into standalone morality plays like "Employee of the Month" and aperture-widening experiments like "Mr. Ruggiero's Neighborhood," the season premiere that spent most of its runtime with FBI agents investigating Tony. 

24. It dealt with sexuality in a frank way that was unusual for its era.

A major plot in Season 6 involves Vito Spatafore (Joseph Gannascoli), a gay mafioso who is forced into hiding and is ultimately murdered by his former family members for his sexuality. There had never been a story thread like that in a mob story before. 

25. It revolutionized ambiguous endings. 

The cut to black and subsequent mystery about whether Tony was killed or not is arguably the boldest ending to a TV show of all time.