Premieres on HBO 9pm Sat. 7 March

The Sopranos enters its winter of discontent

By JOHN DOYLE


When we last saw Tony Soprano, he was nursing his wounds after a bruising, marriage-wrecking argument with his wife, Carmela. The marriage was indeed over. Tony had philandered too much and Carmela's patience had withered away.

Tony's nephew Christopher was coping with a serious drug adduction, even as he was promoted in Tony's gang and had more responsibility. Christopher's girlfriend Adrianna was sinking into depression, as she had to inform on the family to the FBI.

These were not implausible, cliffhanger endings designed to heighten the melodrama.

The winding, twisted story of Tony Soprano's real and mob family is always plausible, often unnervingly so. Even when the atmosphere is torpid, as it was for much of last season, The Sopranos story has a powerful, melancholy quality.





The Sopranos starts its fifth season filled with toxic anger and simmering discontent. Tony (James Gandolfini) is older, fatter, more stupid and impulsive. Carmela (Edie Falco) is coping, but struggles with Tony's resentment and manipulation of their son, AJ (Robert Iler).

From the start, there is a bleak, autumnal air. We see Tony's driveway, house and garden in a cold light. The trees are bare and the leaves drift around. On the soundtrack, the plaintive voice of Emmylou Harris sings Heaven Only Knows: "Every night, it's the same/Feel your heart turn cold as rain." Misery hangs like a mist over Tony Soprano's home and castle.

In the very first episode of the series when it arrived a few years ago, we saw Tony lumber down the driveway to pick up the newspaper. Now we see the newspaper on the wet ground, unused. Tony doesn't live there any more.

It turns out that Tony is watching TV at his sister's house. There's a news report about a slew of jailed mobsters being released. They appear on the screen, a parade of old-timers returning to impinge on Tony's delicately shaped world of crime and intimidation. Tony and the lumbering Bobby sit around, letting Janice (Aida Turturro) get dinner together.

Back at Tony's house, where we once saw him emotionally moved by the flocks of geese who came and landed there (the event that propelled him into therapy and ignited his panic attacks), now, there are no more birds. Instead, a bear wanders the garden in the dark, morosely destroying lawn furniture and terrifying both AJ and Carmela. A malignant force has wandered into the Soprano world.

In the four new episodes of The Sopranos that were sent out for review, the drama is deftly shifted forward and enriched. Alone, Tony is greedy and gross. He's quit therapy but he keeps calling Dr. Malfi (Lorraine Bracco) and even the strippers he sleeps with begin to eye him with vague contempt. He thinks he's smarter than he is. As the old-timers are released from jail, they go back to their old ways and they unleash terrible, pointless violence. Veteran actor Robert Loggia has a juicy role as a paroled mobster who is all too anxious to prove that he's still got what it takes. Steve Buscemi is also part of the cast now, as Tony Blundetto, a hit man who has decided to go straight. The mob guys try to help him out and Blundetto thanks them with acid comments on their self-indulgent stupidity.

There are dumb, violent arguments about who pays for a meal. Tony and Carmela fight a bitter war over who owns the home-entertainment system, AJ has been traumatized by his parents' separation and he becomes a liar and conniver as slick as his dad. Uncle Junior grows more bitter and confused. In one of the darkly funny sequences in the early episodes, Junior watched the Curb Your Enthusiasm series on HBO and wonders what the hell is going on.

This series of The Sopranos re-establishes it as a great, brooding work of classic American storytelling. It's rich in detail, anchored in the ordinary and frightening in its depiction of what these people do to others in the name of family and the crude capitalist system that sustains and unites them.