15 shows that define prestige TV

14. The Sopranos

The same year that The West Wing premiered, HBO dropped a little show called The Sopranos. It would go on to be the show that put HBO on the prestige TV map permanently and also break boundaries for what you could get away with on the small screen. And it influenced just about every cable show that came after it in one way or another.

The Sopranos wasn’t HBO’s first show to feature relatively graphic sex and violence. That honor would go to Oz, the prison drama starring notable names like J.K. Simmons and Christopher Meloni that more or less pioneered the type of TV taboos that have given Federal Communication Commission members nightmares for almost two decades now.

David Chase took the Oz template and applied it to a New Jersey mob boss attempting to keep it together in the insane world in which he inhabits. The show made the careers of Chase, James Gandolfini (RIP), Edie Falco and the rest of the impressive cast, becoming one of the first must-see TV series of the 2000s.

It also infamously made 11.9 million people believe their television sets were broken during the series finale when the screen blacked out abruptly seemingly in the middle of the show’s final scene. Incidentally, it and Glee unintentionally teamed up to make Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” an inescapable ear worm for years to come.

It’s quite possible that HBO’s impressive catalogue of prestige TV would have never seen the light of day if it wasn’t for The Sopranos becoming the commercial and critical darling it was. For that alone, we should all be appreciative of its creative brilliance.