I really enjoyed the PREMISE of the Sopranos (mob leader sees shrink! mafioso goes to high school football practice! made man has cataract surgery! oh, and back at the office, BANG BANG BANG another mob murder!), and I SOMETIMES enjoyed the episodes and sometimes didn't (a few flashback episodes were cruddy, and the ones that centered on Imperioli -- the guy who plays Chrissy, married to the hottie -- were awful because that fuck can't act his way out of a paper bag, although his wife-character is of course smokin'). I always liked the "pastiche" over-the-top acting of Paulie and Silvio. And I delighted that Bruce Springsteen's backup guitarist got to be a mafioso, that was of course fun.
But why did it make such a BIG HIT? I think it was just time-slot. Anything passably good, which was also a serial drama that required a little bit of longer-term attention than watching just one episode, which was also mildly populated with violence and sex, was going to capture an audience. HBO happened to become "big" but still affordable right when Sopranos hit HBO. So, at that moment in the history of television and its offerings to the marketplace, that show happened to fill an otherwise majorly empty niche. But, by simple "critical" criteria, it's not "American Theater Showcase" or even "Twilight Zone" material, IMO. Though I don't think it was as cheap as "Cheers," so somewhere in between.
