Every HBO Show, Ranked

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-hbo-shows-ever-ranked.html

Well, what do you think?

Overall I don't think the ranking is terrible, though they are overthinking things: The Wire is clearly #1.

[hummingofevil]

https://www.vulture.com/article/best-hbo-shows-ever-ranked.html

Well, what do you think?

Overall I don't think the ranking is terrible, though they are overthinking things: The Sopranos is clearly #1.

FTFY.

Seriously though. The only reason The Wire pips The Sopranos is for that moment you get around the first couple of episodes of season 2 of The Wire when you realise WHAT it is; that 's it's not a program about drug dealers from the projects but that it is ABOUT Baltimore, ABOUT sociatal structures and ABOUT power. You just smile and sit back with utter joy at the ambition of it all.

I think The Wire loses out for me as as great as it was it didn't ever reach the absolute peak of the characterisation of Tony and Carmella (the two best characters in TV history) and last season of The Wire was dogshit. As an ambitious project it wins out though. Depends what you rate as more important.

Edit: sorry I need to add a bit more. For me, the whole point of The Sopranos was that it was to slowly turn a mirror onto the audience. The audience who has glamorised these awful murderous evil cunts (be it through media or in real life) and slowly leak that all these flawed people are utterly awful and you really should not like them. That people still are confused by the ending is itself part of it's genuis. It presents a clear outcome as ambiguity. It's telling us to get a grip and form an opinon!

They know the characters down one-by-one but you still hang on in there with your favourites. Pauli is an hilarious lovable character and then they spit him out with Pussy's murder. You are supposed to feel guilty at liking him and giving him the benefit of the doubt (even though you know he is a wrong-un) just because you haven't seen his crimes for yourself. We are as bad as them. But even then you move onto the next character to root for and one-by-one they all fall down not from doing something uniquely awful but by showing us what we already know. We are in denial about the awful reality of it all and eventually it catches up with us. The fact society is where it is right now despite of this is a great irony. It's why I love Carmella so much. She is the heart of the programme IMHO. She is a rotten, cruel soul, willing to take the benefits of her lifestyle for her and her kids benefits but you eventually realise that she is as rotten, if not more so than the rest of them. An awful, hypocritical shell of a woman seeking validation for her own awful descisions. That the program gets there in the end is magnificent.

God I love that show.

[non capisco]

I loved The Wire for the exact reasons hummingofevil eloquently pinpoints but I doubt I'll ever watch it again, whereas I've watched The Sopranos from start to finish in its entirety three times now.

There is a joy to the scene where Junior gets his arm stuck down his kitchen sink and Richie Aprile goes "You're flexin'! You're flexiiiiiiiin'!" in the most Italian-American voice imaginable that The Wire was never able to touch.

The Leftovers is a close second though. And that wouldn't have existed as it did without the Kevin Finnerty episodes of The Sopranos blazing that trail first.

[hummingofevil]

I loved The Wire for the exact reasons hummingofevil eloquently pinpoints but I doubt I'll ever watch it again, whereas I've watched The Sopranos from start to finish in its entirety three times now.

There is a joy to the scene where Junior gets his arm stuck down his kitchen sink and Richie Aprile goes "You're flexin'! You're flexiiiiiiiin'!" in the most Italian-American voice imaginable that The Wire was never able to touch.

The Leftovers is a close second though. And that wouldn't have existed as it did without the Kevin Finnerty episodes of The Sopranos blazing that trail first.

Cheers. Can I just add that I know my SPG is dreadful and I will seek to rectify it in future posts.

[the science eel]

Richie Aprile! What a character! It was only when he came into the show in season 2 that I started to love it.

Did you see the get-together they did earlier this year, Sopranos fans? It's great. Tony Sirico isn't in great shape tho'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSUFaSVPCRQ

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

FTFY.

Seriously though. The only reason The Wire pips The Sopranos is for that moment you get around the first couple of episodes of season 2 of The Wire when you realise WHAT it is; that 's it's not a program about drug dealers from the projects but that it is ABOUT Baltimore, ABOUT sociatal structures and ABOUT power. You just smile and sit back with utter joy at the ambition of it all.

I think The Wire loses out for me as as great as it was it didn't ever reach the absolute peak of the characterisation of Tony and Carmella (the two best characters in TV history) and last season of The Wire was dogshit. As an ambitious project it wins out though. Depends what you rate as more important.

Edit: sorry I need to add a bit more. For me, the whole point of The Sopranos was that it was to slowly turn a mirror onto the audience. The audience who has glamorised these awful murderous evil cunts (be it through media or in real life) and slowly leak that all these flawed people are utterly awful and you really should not like them. That people still are confused by the ending is itself part of it's genuis. It presents a clear outcome as ambiguity. It's telling us to get a grip and form an opinon!

They know the characters down one-by-one but you still hang on in there with your favourites. Pauli is an hilarious lovable character and then they spit him out with Pussy's murder. You are supposed to feel guilty at liking him and giving him the benefit of the doubt (even though you know he is a wrong-un) just because you haven't seen his crimes for yourself. We are as bad as them. But even then you move onto the next character to root for and one-by-one they all fall down not from doing something uniquely awful but by showing us what we already know. We are in denial about the awful reality of it all and eventually it catches up with us. The fact society is where it is right now despite of this is a great irony. It's why I love Carmella so much. She is the heart of the programme IMHO. She is a rotten, cruel soul, willing to take the benefits of her lifestyle for her and her kids benefits but you eventually realise that she is as rotten, if not more so than the rest of them. An awful, hypocritical shell of a woman seeking validation for her own awful descisions. That the program gets there in the end is magnificent.

God I love that show.

That's all fair, and obviously they are both great shows with a legitimate claim to the top spot.

Personally, I think what you've described had already been done before (for example, Goodfellas), whereas the The Wire was a milestone because it was a fairly realistic look at urban crime in which all of the characters were morally ambiguous and equally complex, from drug hitmen to crooked cops.

As much as The Sopranos occasionally hinted at Tony's inner conflicts or the role of his upbringing, he is ultimately more or less a sociopathic character. Nothing in The Sopranos ever reached the heights of pathos of the Avon/Stringer story arc, for example, and Avon's realization that he is part of a system much larger than himself and that he lack the personal capacity to ever go straight. Great stuff.

[Dr Rock]

Did you see the get-together they did earlier this year, Sopranos fans? It's great. Tony Sirico isn't in great shape tho'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSUFaSVPCRQ

I did see that and it's sad to see Paulie like that.

Richie did nothing wrong. Well he never killed the horse anyway.

[hummingofevil]

As much as The Sopranos occasionally hinted at Tony's inner conflicts or the role of his upbringing, he is ultimately more or less a sociopathic character. Nothing in The Sopranos ever reached the heights of pathos of the Avon/Stringer story arc, for example, and Avon's realization that he is part of a system much larger than himself and that he lack the personal capacity to ever go straight. Great stuff.

Fair point. Maybe if I watch them both back I will agree but I always felt the strength of The Sopranos was that it made the audience work that out for themselves. It's obvious that they were all the product of their environment (and as such there is a caveat for their actions) but it was the idea that we, the audience, are part of the society that creates that toxic environment ,that creates a culture of expectation for these characters, that tipped it over to the best-TV-show-ever. The Sopranos is about us as much as it is about them.

Ironically, whilst The Wire shares similar themes I found the fact that it framed it all in the Balitmore, or urban American environment, a little cold. It gives a window for the viewer to think 'yes... but that is what THEY are like" rather than reflect on their own role in the the clusterfuck that is western society. One interesting way The Sopranos does that is with it's Jewish characters. It just teases the fact that there is a bigger picture.

I love this website. Cheers guys. Sorry for going off on one.

[bgmnts]

Oz behind Game of Shite.

Fuck off.

[hummingofevil]

Oz behind Game of Shite.

Fuck off.

I have not seen a second of GOT but surely nothing it has done is as bad as the O'Reilly-aging-drugs jump-the-shark nonsence.

However, I would put OZ up there for being so revolutionary. It's a long forgotten fact but the episode were the Nazis and the Muslims finally kicked off was broadcast in the same week as the 9/11 attacks. That itself is fucking weird.

[Bazooka]

I quick swiped to get to the bottom of the page in hope of seeing The Sopranos at number 1, in a sadomasochistic fashion knowing if that show wasn't number 1 I would have gone berserk and uppercuted a colleague to death.

[NoSleep]

Not every show...

The hardest exclusion was sketch comedy and dramatic anthologies, since the former category includes a few of HBO's best (like Mr. Show and The Kids in the Hall) and the latter represents some of HBO's earliest (like The Hitchhiker).

[dontrunyoullfall]

Larry Sanders top, then The Leftovers. The rest, wherever.

[imitationleather]

Sex and the City must be up there, right?

[sevendaughters]

makes you realise what a dry hump most prestige telly is. Wire and Sanders easy top 2, never seen Sopranos (waiting for the right time). Cadfael would break this top 10 if it were HBO.

[Sin Agog]

Rewatched The Sopranos not so long ago.  It's brilliant and all, so well-observed, but I feel now what I felt then, it lost a lot of its mojo around Season 5, when the pacing became floatier and they repeated the 'bring in new character/character becomes troublesome/kill off new character at end of season' arc one too many times with Buscemi.  Was more impressed than ever with Gandolfini's acting, though.  There's an episode in season 3 in which he's depressed and grieving and over-medicated where he becomes eerily mellow and weak as a kitten with these half-mast eyes that's so well-acted I almost wanted to applaud the TV.

[Sin Agog]

I did see that and it's sad to see Paulie like that.

Richie did nothing wrong. Well he never killed the horse anyway.

That's what Paulie gets for trolling all the politics threads for so long.

[Enrico Palazzo]

Enlightened and High Maintenance are amazing. Watch them if you haven't already.

[the science eel]

do any of you seriously watch shows like The Wire or The Sopranos and think 'the reason I'm enjoying this is because they're leaving it up to me to work out whether what that character did was a trangressive act, and furthermore the narrative arc is satisfactory' ?

[jake thunder]

I did see that and it's sad to see Paulie like that.

Richie did nothing wrong. Well he never killed the horse anyway.

You mean Ralphie ya fuckin mook! Oh!

[Dr Rock]

do any of you seriously watch shows like The Wire or The Sopranos and think 'the reason I'm enjoying this is because they're leaving it up to me to work out whether what that character did was a trangressive act, and furthermore the narrative arc is satisfactory' ?

Never watched The Wire but yes. Part of why I think The Sopranos is one of the best TV shows ever made is that it did make you vacillate between finding them 'cool' as gangsters, and sympathetic as human beings, then reminding you what monsters they also were. And then making you question whether it is good for you as an audience member to ever take such characters 99% sympathetic, as in other stuff about gangsters. David Chase knew what he was doing.

I suggest you stick to Mrs Browns Boys, which is what you like.

[Dr Rock]

You mean Ralphie ya fuckin mook! Oh!

Oh yeah. He didn't kill the horse either.

[Chollis]

I loved The Wire for the exact reasons hummingofevil eloquently pinpoints but I doubt I'll ever watch it again, whereas I've watched The Sopranos from start to finish in its entirety three times now.

The Wire gets better with every viewing

[the science eel]

No, not at all.

It was a genuine question although I suppose it might have come across as a bit snarky.

We tend to justify things with language after our visceral first reaction, right? I enjoy The Sopranos because the stories are really interesting and I like the acting and I like seeing people get beaten up and then the torment that follows. I'm not sure whether I go through any kind of soul-searching once the episode's finished.

[Dr Rock]

I like seeing people get beaten up and then the torment that follows. I'm not sure whether I go through any kind of soul-searching once the episode's finished.

Perhaps you don't have a soul, Mr Sociopath, ever considered that?

[jake thunder]

Oh yeah. He didn't kill the horse either.

Actually... apparently the director of the episode told Joey Pants to play it as if he didn't kill the horse but in The Sopranos Sessions book David Chase said he defo did whack that old horsey. So whaddya gonna do?

[Dr Rock]

Actually... apparently the director of the episode told Joey Pants to play it as if he didn't kill the horse but in The Sopranos Sessions book David Chase said he defo did whack that old horsey. So whaddya gonna do?

In this case I'd ignore authorial intent and go by the lack of evidence and how JP played the scene. Interesting info though, you are not a sociopath.

[Sin Agog]

My main problem with The Sopranos is that Ralphie pronounced whore 'who-oar' but said horse just like a normal person.  He should by rights have called it a who-oarse.  Ruins the whole show.

[Puce Moment]

Well that list has some serious issues, but the top 5 is exactly the same as my top 5 (although I would have deliberated over The Wire and Deadwood).

However, Flight of the Conchords at 25?

[lipsink]

Mr Bean was a HBO show? I had no idea. Was Allo Allo one too?