The Sopranos creator David Chase criticized streaming executives in a new interview, suggesting they’re collectively making the medium less sophisticated.
Speaking to The Times U.K., the Emmy-winning writer-producer claims TV quality is going backwards, becoming more like when he first disrupted the industry with HBO’s The Sopranos in 1999.
Chase declared his iconic hit’s 25th anniversary should be “a funeral” for the industry instead of a celebration.
“We’re going back to where I was,” he said. “They’re going to have commercials [on streamers like Prime Video].” Chase said he recently tried to get to a project made about a high-end escort and was “told to dumb it down.”
“We are more into multitasking,” he continued. “We seem to be confused and audiences can’t keep their minds on things, so we can’t make anything that makes too much sense, takes our attention and requires an audience to focus. And as for streaming executives? It is getting worse. We’re going back to where we were.”
Chase referred to the post-Sopranos golden era as “A blip,” then adds that it was, “a 25-year blip. And to be clear, I’m not talking only about The Sopranos, but a lot of other hugely talented people out there who I feel increasingly bad for.”
When the interviewer mentions HBO’s Succession as an example of smart and sophisticated TV, Chase counters the show was greenlit many years ago.
“So, it is a funeral,” Chase insisted. “Something is dying.”
(Of course, others might point to additional shows besides Succession to show that sophisticated TV storytelling is still going strong — like FX’s Reservation Dogs and The Bear, HBO’s White Lotus, Apple’s Severance, and even Disney+’s Andor, to name but a few).
In another part of the interview, Chase rather colorfully describes what it was like working for broadcast TV before he got his Sopranos gig: “Back then the networks were in an artistic pit. A shithole. The process was repulsive. In meetings, these people would always ask to take out the one thing that made an episode worth doing. I should have quit.” But with his Sopranos success, “I made them regret all their decades of stupidity and greed.”