Those of us who love movies are by nature suspicious of the hype machine, by the outrageous pull quotes festooning newspaper ads, for This Week's Movie Of the Century!!!!, more often than not from blowhard reviewers we've never heard of. And though in my lifetime I've probably spent more time watching television than any other single activity, I'm particularly wary when a series is touted as the greatest work of art in a quarter-century (by the New York Times, no less), when there seems to be some mad competition between critics over who can offer the most lavish praise. And so I came to "The Sopranos" late, for fear that it had been oversold, that it couldn't live up to the hype. I've seen way too many mob movies, and a lot of the more recent ones have just been treading water, picking over the dead carcasses of familiar territory; and it's been a good long while -- dating to when I got my DVD player, probably -- since I got hooked on a television show. But you know what? Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. The pilot episode is a little masterpiece of the form, and the twelve episodes rounding out the season are full of drama, color, texture, of life.

"The Sopranos" is structured around New Jersey mafioso Tony Soprano's two families: his wife and kids on the one hand, his mob buddies on the other. Everything provokes anxiety in Tony - his suspicious wife Carmela; his kids, who know all too well what their old man is up to; the Feds on his tail, the cops on his payroll, the ambitious and pigheaded capos he deals with every day. Things have gotten so bad that Tony is having panic attacks, and in a rare moment of candor and insight, Tony decides it's time to see a therapist. That's the loose structure of the show, and it provides ample opportunity for the consideration of more profound topics, such as the appropriateness of psychotherapy; the immigrant experience in America; the portrayal of Italian Americans in popular culture; the differences and similarities between Tony and "conventional" businessmen; the significance of fidelity, of chastity, of religion. Series creator David Chase talks about how he wanted the season to tell a story, but also for each episode to feel like its own little movie, and in this respect, the show is a tremendous success. As Tony, James Gandolfini is a bull of a performer - he's in nearly every scene of every episode, he sets the tone and his sensibility informs all that goes on. He's not hardly the conventional leading man, and thank goodness for that - at one point Chase compares him to Jackie Gleason, his ability to turn quickly from sweetness to murderous rage. It's a towering performance. (One can't help but wonder what a prettied-up Tony Soprano would look like on network television. Tony Danza? Fuhgedaboudit.) "The Sopranos" is deliberately evocative of great mob stories of the past, particularly the "Godfather" pictures and "GoodFellas" - Chase cites both as influences, particularly the opera of the former and the black comedy of the latter. We can see their marks in the casting, for one thing. Dominic Chianese is Tony's wily old Uncle Junior, and is a familiar face from "The Godfather, Part II," where he played Hyman Roth's right hand man, Johnny Ola. (He always made money for his partners.) Lorraine Bracco, mob wife in "GoodFellas," is mob shrink here, and in many respects her Dr. Melfi seems designed to head off criticisms about the series - that the cosa nostra is an inappropriate emblem of Italian Americans, that Mafia movies celebrate thugs and violence. And it's not just the casting - Michael Imperioli plays Christopher, Tony's nephew, and he too is a "GoodFellas" alum. In the Scorsese picture, as Spider, he takes a bullet in the foot from a crazed gangster - here, he's on the other end of the gun, and comments to his victim, "It happens." At one point, Chase refers to "Goodfellas" as "the Koran," and while there's a certain mock solemnity to that, there's a whole lot of truth to it, too. "The Sopranos" isn't for the faint of heart - lots of profanity and nudity, violence and grisly subject matter. But this isn't a great television show because the characters use curse words and we see naked girls - it's a great show because it's wise and smart and funny about human behavior, and is so sharp about its world. It demonstrates the storytelling truth once again that the more particular you get, the more universal you get. If the audience for "The Sopranos" was exclusively mobsters, it would never have made it on the air - but any of us who have dealt with a difficult parent, an obstreperous child, a pain-in-the-ass sibling, an impossible colleague, anybody at all is sure to find some profound truths in these thirteen episodes. The other great thing, aside from there being no commercials, is that it's a series that runs counter to the logic of television series. We take great comfort as an audience in knowing that Cliffy will always be at the end of the bar, that Kramer will come bursting in, that the murder in the first five minutes will be solved by Jessica Fletcher in the last five minutes. Not so here. It's probably an exaggerated truth of mafia life that people get whacked, but whether you're mobbed up or not, you know that people change, that friendships come and go, that some endure, that others don't. Happy endings - or sad endings, for that matter - are for movies, and for television; life goes on. And on. Chase and Gandolfini both cite "College" as their favorite episode - it's the one in which Tony takes his daughter Meadow to visit college campuses, and he finds a mob informant stashed away by the Witness Protection Program. It's a terrific hour, it's compact and it won't burden the uninitiated with too much backstory, but for my money, there can't be a best episode from this first season that doesn't feature Livia more prominently. The stock in trade of the late Nancy Marchand was proper old ladies, with the Katharine Graham-like newspaper publisher from "Lou Grant" at the head of that list. But she shines as Livia, namesake of the evil mother in "I, Claudius," who may or may not have engineered a mob hit on her only son. It's pretty much the central joke of "The Sopranos," that the tough guy mobster can't take on his own mommy, and it comes to a towering climax in the final episode here. (Season Two is to be released on DVD in November, and there's a sense there that they emptied their metaphorical chambers the first time out - once Mom tries to have you whacked, where can you go from there? A certain amount of wheel-spinning crept into Season Three, and the loss of Marchand is felt acutely. But hey, I'll settle. You set the VCR for Season Four, and I'll prepare the pasta.)

Picture: All the episodes are letterboxed, and while that still strikes me as a little grand for a television series (witness the new episodes of "E.R."), it works well here - one wonders if Chase and company had one eye on the eventual DVD release. Chase directed the pilot episode in a straightforward, understated style, and that provided the template for the series - no "N.Y.P.D. Blue" shaky camera work here, or rapid cutting; just some good clean storytelling. Sound: David Chase has as keen an ear for music as Scorsese, as anyone, and source music is used to particularly good effect. I'm grateful that there isn't any indicating scoring - it's a show that trusts its audience to get the point, without being knocked on the head with the points musically. Extra respect to Chase for having heard the song used as the show's opening thing on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic."

There's a terrific sit-down interview of Chase by Peter Bogdanovich, and the two of them continue the conversation on a commentary track over the pilot episode. Bogdanovich is a fine filmmaker in his own right ("The Last Picture Show" is on my short list of all-time favorites), but he may have an even greater legacy as an archivist and film historian. He's brimming with the history of movies, and while that sometimes spills over into him hogging some of the limelight - does anyone care to hear his John Ford impression, and is this the right venue for discussing the scoring of "Picture Show"? - he draws great things out of Chase. (Bonus fun fact: Bogdanovich shows up in later seasons of the series, as Melfi's therapist.) Chase talks about how the pilot was written for Fox, who passed, as did all the other broadcast networks; and about the importance of shooting the show on location in New Jersey, not on a Burbank back lot. He's also informed about the history of movies and their influence on him without being full of himself - his love for Bu?uel is manifested in the dream sequences, and he asks provocative questions like: Were Vito and Michael Corleone depressed? What if they were on Prozac? The shows are compact, but the process was leisurely and drawn out enough to allow for many happy accidents. Among the best, I'd say, is the evolution of Adriana, the character played by Drea de Matteo - she's got all of one line in the pilot ("Your table is ready, sir"), but by the end of the season, she's a fleshed out, sympathetic character, at once dopey and touching. Each of the thirteen episodes is trigged out with "Previously On" and "Next On" features, as well as summaries; and there are two short (less than five minutes each) "featurettes" produced for HBO for the show's launch.