man character. The entertainment aspect is easier to comprehend given that the program offers a number of different entertainment values at the same time--it is funny, frightening, violent, poignant, and well done. The show became popular quickly, though its popularity is a relative thing given that cable does not reach as many homes as broadcast television and so has numbers that seem much smaller but that are still significant. It has also been a critical success: "Within weeks, critics were enthralled and viewers were hooked by Soprano and his not so merry band of dreamers, schemers and dirty dealers" (Gregory and Miller 58).
Critics have been favorably inclined toward the show, many noting that while the premise of the show does not sound innovative, the delivery is. The show is about low-level gangsters, notably one Tony Soprano, who would like to be a mob boss but who is faced at the same time with the urban angst facing many in the middle class today:
An overbearing mother, a boss you'd like to kill, bugs eating your garden, bugs on your telephone--life at the turn of the millennium has become one giant pain for everyone. Even a murderous thug like Tony has to go to a shrink and pop Prozac. No wonder people are obsessed with this show: The Sopranos is the first modern, middle class mob drama (Peyser and Chang 68).
Tom Shales describes the show as "a tragicomic epic about a northern New Jersey mobster named Tony Soprano and the two worlds crumbling around him: his real family, who have the usual family woes as well as the added burden of a gangster for a patriarch, and his mo
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