The Sopranos

“[R]ich and comprehensive. . . full of surprising connections and comparisons.” - David Thorburn, Cinema Journal

“An engaging and lucid account of the influential cultural status that HBO’s The Sopranos achieved by allowing diverse artistic and commercial interests to profitably converge in the postnetwork era. The book is distinctive in detailing not just how fans and critics animated the series, but also how HBO and the producers carefully crafted an epic narrative that would lead to a profitable ancillary afterlife. Dana Polan proves that close, careful narrative analysis can provide prescient insights about television’s increasingly sophisticated practices to which broader cultural and industrial accounts are blind.” - John Thornton Caldwell, author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television

“As a case study of the modern media environment, with its focus on synergy and the extension of media product across the expanse of the controlling conglomerate's subsidiaries, as well as into the popular culture of its audience(s), The Sopranos is a thoughtful and intensive tour de force.” - Michael R. Frontani, Italian American Review

“Polan delimits an excellent set of features and motifs to analyze and, by and large, acquits himself well in his readings, as well as in their situation within the popular media.” - Charles J. Stivale, Criticism

“Rather than going along with the familiar judgment that The Sopranos stood above and apart from the usual run of mass-cultural fare, Polan reads it as continuous with both the traditions of genre television and the hierarchy-scrambling protocols of the postmodern condition. . . . Polan’s book is often insightful about the visual dimension of the Sopranos. . .” - Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed