Bye, bye, "Sopranos": Black see and mourn

Then the screen just turns black. Only a few seconds, but too long to dazzle to the next scene, finally the darkness ends in the credits. In the middle of the biggest cliffhanger the "sopranos" have ever done. A series that never needed any because it was just too good. Instead Tony sat at the end of individual episodes with FBI agents at espresso and sandwich together or with wife and children under the Christmas tree. And now the screen just turns black.

AP

He has gotten really involved in the global television business: James Gandolfini as TV mafioso Tony Soprano

He who does not die struggles with decay. "I'm old," Tony tells his wife when he has lost his brother in a fight with his brother-in-law. Nevertheless, he has to take care of the problems of his family. Nephew Christopher prefers shooting movies rather than taking over business, son AJ desperately lives, and Uncle Junior, who nearly shot Tony in the past season, can not remember his name when he wants to make peace with him at the retirement home.

So Tony kills again. Go to therapy, love his wife, do it with a whore. Sip espresso in her dressing gown with zersausten hair, to decide later in fine thread about human life. No figure of the "Sopranos" was good or just evil, the hero's moral inconsistency gave the series an unprecedented complexity. And James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano takes this game to the extreme with the vagaries of the human all-too-human in the last season. Between a charming grin and the next outburst of anger are often only fractions of seconds.

The success of the "Sopranos" was a triumph of television about the cinema. Earlier, bad movie directors were advised to try their hand at television, today it draws the cinema-makers and actors on the screen. Just recently, Michael Douglas complained that in recent years, much of the creativity has migrated from cinema to television and it is therefore increasingly difficult to bring good films to the screen.

Time for more quality

Anyone who has seen some of Gandolfini's earlier films wonders what ridiculously small parts ("Crimson Tide", "Get Shorty") he sank in front of the "Sopranos" in the cinema. This was also new to Tony and his colleagues: No TV series was so well taken to the smallest supporting role, developed their plots and characters with such literary sophistication. No wonder that Dominic Chianese as Corrado "Junior" Soprano, Edie Falco as Carmela or Vincent Curatola as Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni in the hero canon of modern television include Ben Cartwright and JR Ewing.

Paying channels like HBO have revolutionized television, said David Simon, creator of the Baltimore thriller saga "The Wire," in an interview. Instead of Cliffhanger in five-minute intervals because of the commercial breaks, the authors were allowed to suddenly spend time with the story and the people. Out came such masterpieces as the "Sopranos" or the Undertaker series "Six Feet Under". Twenty-one Emmys and five Golden Globes garnered Tony and co. In their eight years of broadcasting, and the finale saw twelve million viewers.

The ratings in Germany, however, were mau. Anyone who is accustomed to "Lindenstraße" or "GZSZ" from childhood on is just having a hard time with a new diet. Especially if it only flares in the middle of the night and on the weekend like the "Sopranos" on the screen. Or maybe it was a bit because the sopranos were as American as baseball or Thanksgiving, and folklore traditions were not so easily transplanted into foreign cultural spaces.

The next killer is already on the way

Is there a life after the "Sopranos", will series fans now ask themselves? The answer is yes. "Six Feet Under" star Michael C. Hall will air as a hobby serial killer "Dexter" this spring to "remove the garbage from the streets of Miami" for an underdog for the comedy hit "My Name is Earl" , who makes his life worse with reparations actions, has already secured his rights to RTL. Maybe even for "Californication" with David Duchovny as a worn-out writer or "Dirty Sexy Money" with Peter Krause ("Six Feet Under") as a girl for everything in the service of a wealthy family customers at the TV stations.

Until then, the "Sopranos" can have an effect. And prove how to make the exit at the right moment. It can be very simple: screen black, sound gone, credits.