"Actor: Tony Sirico"

• The Sopranos - Series 1-6 - Complete | DVD | (08/03/2009) from £47.13   |  Saving you £2.86 (6.07%)   |  RRP £49.99

  This is the first time that all episodes of writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary US television series The Sopranos have been brought together in one box set which is a seminal event for any fan of the series. The Sopranos is nominally an urban gangster drama but its true impact strikes closer to home chronicling a dysfunctional suburban family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families his collegial mob clan and his own nouveau riche brood.

• The Sopranos: Complete Series 2 | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £69.99   |  Saving you £-8.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £61.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme-makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include the hapless efforts by Chris (Michael Imperioli) to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme-makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, and devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos - Season 5 | DVD | (20/06/2005) from £17.99   |  Saving you £44.00 (244.58%)   |  RRP £61.99

  Facing an indeterminate sentence of weeks/months/years until new episodes, Sopranos fans are advised to take the fifth; season, that is. At this point, superlatives don't do The Sopranos justice, but justice was at last served to this benchmark series. For the first time, The Sopranos rubbed out The West Wing to take home its first Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series. Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo also earned Best Supporting Actor and Actress honors for some of their finest hours as Christopher and Adriana. From the moment a wayward bear lumbers into the Sopranos' yard in the season opener, it is clear that The Sopranos is in anything but a "stagmire." The series benefits from an infusion of new blood, the so-called "Class of 2004," imprisoned "family" members freshly released from jail. Most notable among these is Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi, who directed the pivotal season 3 episode "Pine Barrens"), who initially wants to go straight, but proves himself to be something of a "free agent," setting up a climactic stand-off between Tony and New York boss Johnny Sack. These 13 mostly riveting episodes unfold with a page-turning intensity with many rich subplots. Estranged couple Tony and Carmela (the incomparable James Gandolfini and Edie Falco) work toward a reconciliation (greased by Tony's purchase of a $600,000 piece of property for Carmela to develop). The Feds lean harder on an increasingly stressed-out and distraught Adriana to "snitch" with inevitable results. This season's hot-button episode is "The Test Dream," in which Tony is visited by some of the series' dear, and not-so-dearly, departed in a harrowing nightmare. With this set, fans can enjoy marathon viewings of an especially satisfying season, but considering the long wait ahead for season 6, best to take Tony's advice to his son, who, at one point, gulps down a champagne toast. "Slow down," Tony says. "You're supposed to savor it." --Donald Liebenson, Amazon.com

• Wonder Wheel | DVD | (16/07/2018) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  WONDER WHEEL tells the story of four characters whose lives intertwine amid the hustle and bustle of the Coney Island amusement park in the 1950s: Ginny (Kate Winslet), an emotionally volatile former actress now working as a waitress in a clam house; Humpty (Jim Belushi), Ginny's rough-hewn carousel operator husband; Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a handsome young lifeguard who dreams of becoming a playwright; and Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty's long-estranged daughter, who is now hiding out from gangsters at her father's apartment. Poetically photographed by Vittorio Storaro, WONDER WHEEL is a powerful dramatic tale of passion, violence, and betrayal that plays out against the picturesque tableau of 1950s Coney Island.

• The Sopranos: Complete Series 4 | DVD | (11/03/2003) from £14.49   |  Saving you £47.50 (76.60%)   |  RRP £61.99

  Unlike the previous three, this fourth series of The Sopranos largely eschews an overriding story arc in favour of developing several interrelated plot strands, most of which are then left dangling tantalisingly at the end. This year Tony's many extra-marital affairs finally come home to roost, even as he faces challenges to his leadership from within and without. Paulie Walnuts simmers with resentment over his perceived neglect, a resentment only exacerbated by Christopher's promotion; while Christopher's growing drug habit undermines Tony's trust in him. Paulie makes overtures to Johnny Sack and the New York family; Sack himself bears a deadly grudge against Ralph Cifaretto, and also embroils Tony in a dispute between the two families. Ralph and Tony clash over a shared interest in both a race horse and a goomar--you just know it's going to end in something much worse than tears. The women have as many problems, though: Adriana has reluctantly turned FBI informer, a drug-addled Christopher squashes her dog, and she has to confess that she can't have children; Carmela falls maddeningly, frustratingly in love with one of Tony's closest companions; Janice inveigles herself into Bobby's affections in a display of breathtaking emotional manipulation; while Meadow can no longer conceal the disgust she feels about her father's business, and Dr Melfi is increasingly sidelined, since Tony's behavioural issues have become, to all practical purposes, untreatable. The whole ends on a downbeat note as personal disillusionment overshadows the mob politics. With the imminent arrival of Steve Buscemi to the cast, the fifth series is primed to be an explosive one. --Mark Walker

• The Sopranos - Season 6 - Vol. 1 | DVD | (27/11/2006) from £12.99   |  Saving you £47.00 (361.82%)   |  RRP £59.99

  What does fate hold in store for Tony in the sixth season of HBO's multi-award winning gangster drama. Featuring 12 episodes.

• Romeo Is Bleeding | DVD | (19/05/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Romeo Is Bleeding is the flawed black comedy from director Peter Medak (The Krays) about a bad cop who slowly gets his due. Gary Oldman plays yet another quirky character, this time a New York detective on the take. His life goes haywire as he squares off with a Russian hit woman. Despite an intriguing cast and great dialogue, the movie becomes a bit too eccentric for its own good as several actors have nothing to do. The high point is Lena Olin, who finally has a role she can sink her teeth into: her zesty, monstrous assassin, Mona Demarkov, is one of the great movie villains. --Doug Thomas

• Jersey Shore Shark Attack | DVD | (20/08/2012) from £14.74   |  Saving you £-8.75 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Many years ago, hundreds of locals and tourists were massacred by giant man-eating sharks in the infamous 1916 Jersey Shore attacks. But that's just a legend... or is it? It's a holiday weekend on the Jersey Shore and, unbeknownst to anyone, underwater drills have attracted dozens of albino bull sharks to the pier. When a man goes missing, TC (The Complication), Nookie and friends fear the worst and plead with the police chief to close down the beach. It isn't until a famous singer is eaten alive during a performance on the pier that the shark hunt begins. Now, the Preppies must work together with the Guidos in order to save the Jersey Shore and its inhabitants from another vicious slaughter.

• The Sopranos: Complete Series 2 | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• A Muppets Christmas - Letters to Santa | DVD | (05/10/2009) from £3.68   |  Saving you £15.57 (643.39%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Muppets: Letters To Santa

• Catchfire | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Previous UK releases of Catchfire have listed the pseudonymous Allan Smithee as director, but this version proudly opens with "a Dennis Hopper film". Also known as Backtrack, it offers a plot that advances by illogical leaps and bounds while whole scenes seem to go astray. With prominently billed actors getting almost nothing to do while major players go un-credited, a bland music score that might have been laid in from another film entirely and an ending that makes a lot of noise without actually resolving much, the film certainly has its bad points. However, it's also one of Hopper's more eccentric films, and more fun than Colors or The Hot Spot (which he had no trouble owning up to), partly because the director also takes a quirky lead role and his own personal interests are stirred by the modern art frills of the chase plot. The film opens with LA-based conceptual artist Jodie Foster, looking chunkily terrific just before her adult career took off, suffering a minor breakdown on the freeway and happening on a gangland execution. Pint-sized mob boss Joe Pesci sets his killers on her but the crooks ineptly murder Foster's boyfriend (Charlie Sheen, taking a very early bath). Pesci calls in Hopper, a professional hitman who immerses himself in Foster's life and art in order to track her down only to develop an obsessive crush on the woman. When he finds her, he gives her the choice between getting rubbed out or becoming his property. Hopper retains the knack for finding odd-looking byways of rural America, but is uncomfortable with helicopter chases and shoot-outs. The leads, despite great chunks of missing story, are both interesting--Foster sexily vulnerable and Hopper doing a wry New York drawl as the sax-playing hit man. Catchfire also offers an amazing supporting cast of the director's friends, including Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich), Tony Sirico (The Sopranos), Bob Dylan (with a chainsaw), Helena Kallianotes (Five Easy Pieces), Julia Adams (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and John Turturro.On the DVD: the film itself comes in a good-looking widescreen transfer, but the lack of special features let the disc down, with only feeble notes for three cast members (and no Smithee filmography). --Kim Newman

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 1) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Elmo's Christmas Countdown / A Christmas Eve On Sesame Street Double Pack | DVD | (17/11/2008) from £6.55   |  Saving you £3.44 (34.40%)   |  RRP £9.99

  There''s a miracle on Sesame Street in this magical Christmas tale. Elmo Abby Cadabby and their new friend Stiller the Elf (voice of Ben Stiller) are going to count down to Christmas with the Christmas Counter-Downer. But all the counting boxes have gone missing and Christmas may never come again! Can Elmo and friends save Christmas? With the help of very special guests Sheryl Crow Jamie Foxx Anne Hathaway Jennifer Hudson Alicia Keys Brad Paisley Ty Pennington Steve Schirripa Tony Sirico and Kevin James (as Santa Claus) Elmo and friends will learn to believe in Christmas miracles.

• The Sopranos: Complete HBO Seasons 1-6 Box Set | DVD | (19/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £160.99

  Critically hailed as 'a modern masterpiece' (The Observer) the series is a darkly humorous and often violent look at a New Jersey family whose patriarch happens to be a mob boss. The pace is fast the conflict fierce and the humour bitterly dark The Sopranos takes hold and doesn't let go.

• Jersey Shore Shark Attack | Blu Ray | (20/08/2012) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-2.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Many years ago, hundreds of locals and tourists were massacred by giant man-eating sharks in the infamous 1916 Jersey Shore attacks. But that's just a legend... or is it? It's a holiday weekend on the Jersey Shore and, unbeknownst to anyone, underwater drills have attracted dozens of albino bull sharks to the pier. When a man goes missing, TC (The Complication), Nookie and friends fear the worst and plead with the police chief to close down the beach. It isn't until a famous singer is eaten alive during a performance on the pier that the shark hunt begins. Now, the Preppies must work together with the Guidos in order to save the Jersey Shore and its inhabitants from another vicious slaughter.

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 2) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Catchfire | DVD | (18/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Previous UK releases of Catchfire have listed the pseudonymous Allan Smithee as director, but this version proudly opens with "a Dennis Hopper film". Also known as Backtrack, it offers a plot that advances by illogical leaps and bounds while whole scenes seem to go astray. With prominently billed actors getting almost nothing to do while major players go un-credited, a bland music score that might have been laid in from another film entirely and an ending that makes a lot of noise without actually resolving much, the film certainly has its bad points. However, it's also one of Hopper's more eccentric films, and more fun than Colors or The Hot Spot (which he had no trouble owning up to), partly because the director also takes a quirky lead role and his own personal interests are stirred by the modern art frills of the chase plot. The film opens with LA-based conceptual artist Jodie Foster, looking chunkily terrific just before her adult career took off, suffering a minor breakdown on the freeway and happening on a gangland execution. Pint-sized mob boss Joe Pesci sets his killers on her but the crooks ineptly murder Foster's boyfriend (Charlie Sheen, taking a very early bath). Pesci calls in Hopper, a professional hitman who immerses himself in Foster's life and art in order to track her down only to develop an obsessive crush on the woman. When he finds her, he gives her the choice between getting rubbed out or becoming his property. Hopper retains the knack for finding odd-looking byways of rural America, but is uncomfortable with helicopter chases and shoot-outs. The leads, despite great chunks of missing story, are both interesting--Foster sexily vulnerable and Hopper doing a wry New York drawl as the sax-playing hit man. Catchfire also offers an amazing supporting cast of the director's friends, including Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich), Tony Sirico (The Sopranos), Bob Dylan (with a chainsaw), Helena Kallianotes (Five Easy Pieces), Julia Adams (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and John Turturro.On the DVD: the film itself comes in a good-looking widescreen transfer, but the lack of special features let the disc down, with only feeble notes for three cast members (and no Smithee filmography). --Kim Newman

• The Sopranos: Series 2 (Vols. 4-6) | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £33.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include soldier Chris (Michael Imperioli) hapless efforts to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the Government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 3) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £33.02   |  Saving you £-17.77 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• The Sopranos: Series 1 (Vol. 6) | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £16.79   |  Saving you £-1.54 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there is the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.The series' brilliant first season is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his mid-level capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford, and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfather epic, The Sopranos sustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.The first season's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what is not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com