Sopranos

Jaime Weinman and Adrian Lee talk about the tyranny of the author and the nature of intent in TV

‘I had a girlfriend who wasn’t quite in love with me. She told me time was on my side. I’m still married to her.’

‘Tis the season for bulky, pricey complete series box sets, and the bulkiest and priciest of them all is The Sopranos: The Complete Series, available starting tomorrow. The set consists of all the previously-released DVDs of the show, plus the soundtrack CDs (featuring music used in the series), and two newly-produced DVDs of bonus material. The show itself is a known quantity, as are the previous season sets. If you don’t have The Sopranos on DVD yet, buying this set is cheaper than buying all seven DVD sets individually (and only a little more expensive than buying used copies of all seven of them). If you have no Sopranos in your collection, it makes sense to save up for the complete set — though I have the sinking feeling that Time-Warner might try to spring a Blu-Ray version on us sometime down the road, forcing us to buy it all over again. (It depends on whether you think that Blu-Ray will supplant DVD or whether you think it won’t. I’m with the nay-sayers, myself, and so I’m not afraid to buy standard DVDs. Perhaps I should be, though.) So the question is, are the new bonus features worth the price of this set if you already have some or all of the season sets?