David Chase called the last quarter-century of ambitious TV a blip
David Chase, who wrote the HBO series about the New Jersey mafia, said the era that many credit with starting a golden age of television was over. Talking to the Times 25 years after The Sopranos first aired, he called the last quarter-century of ambitious and complex drama “a blip.”
He said he was being told to “dumb down” his productions and had been warned against making television that “requires an audience to focus.” He believes the kind of show that was synonymous with The Sopranos—The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men—would not be commissioned now.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The hardest part to argue with is the attention diagnosis. Chase says it is harder than ever to gain undivided attention, and that people are multitasking more; his example is taking calls at a dying mother’s bedside.
But he is also a man trying to make a show. He told the Times about a project with Hannah Fidell, about a high-end sex worker forced into witness protection, now on its third draft and fifth meeting, and says they were told it was too complex. That does not make the diagnosis false, but it does make “dumb it down” sound like a negotiation over his own script.