The Sopranos

Television took a quantum leap forward after this show gained its following, and made money for HBO.  By all accounts The Sopranos would never have worked had traditional Hollywood notions of casting or scriptwriting been imposed on it.  Suddenly the ideal for a cable network show became not to work at 26 episodes per year of a show, but to do 13 or so.  And to let some show creator run things entirely, and to make their show as individualistic as they wanted to.  And to aim to be as perfect as this.  Or as funny as this.

Again and again this show was self-destructive behavior, played for laughs.  (Inspired in part, according to the show's creator, by the great and underappreciated movie Trees Lounge).  We watch people hurt themselves, in cyclical patterns, for reasons that they either don't understand or don't want to face.

It turns out that this approach to entertainment can be wildly successful, if you can invent colorful enough characters.  "The Sopranos" blazed a lot of paths, not least for psychological depth and bleakness possible in popular entertainment, and inspired a wave of television that left past high points in the dust.  And in its own dark way it was as funny as anything that you'll ever see, if you're in the mood for it.