The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 85

Preview. Pick Of The Week Barbara Hooks What does one call a reconstructed mobster an unmade man, a remade man? As Tony's psychiatrist, the ONY Soprano (James He waste is business Gandolfini) also in a New -management modern-day runs Jersey. a mob boss, a made man, and he's having a mid-life crisis. When his father was a Mafia capo, people had standards. They respected the code of silence.

Now, every wise guy is making a deal with the DA and selling his story to Hollywood. Meanwhile, Tony is trying to be a loving husband, a devoted dad and a dutiful son to his widowed mother. Between The Family and the family, he's so stressed he consults a shrink and goes into therapy. The idea is familiar. Playing a conflicted mobster, Robert De Niro spilled his guts (metaphorically speaking) on Billy Crystal's couch in Analyze This and Leslie Grantham played a caring, sharing gangland boss in The Paradise Club, picking up the kids from school after eliminating the competition.

But there's never been a Mafia drama like this on TV and it's brilliant. It also begs the question: Is Don, is very good normally cool, calm Dr Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco of Goodfellas) is understandably hesitant. After all, the Surgeon General warns that knowing too much about New Jersey mobsters is a health hazard. But as the barriers come down, Tony opens up about his personal relationships. His brassy wife, Carmela (Emmy Award winner Edie Falco), is rock solid and caring, but she has a mind of her own.

Daughter Also previewed in Green 1 Guide this week FRIDAY About Us: Flag (page 31) United Tastes Of America (page 33) SATURDAY The Day The Earth Was Hit (page 34) SUNDAY Renaissance (page 31) Walking With Dinosaurs (page 35) The Age Green Guide 29 RADIO PROGRAMS the major US networks years ago, but like nervous Nellies they turned him down. HBO, who took a punt on The Larry Sanders Show, had the courage to give these Sopranos a voice after five years. This year, the show deservedly won 15 Emmy nominations. Although Tony and his cronies hang out in cafes quoting The Godfather and talking about the good old days, David Chase only uses the Mafia as a device to talk about social change and the way it affects the family. Indeed, it is a mark of his writing that he can make a sympathetic character out of a man who routinely busts kneecaps and worse.

And 'it's a mark of Gandolfini's performance that he can tread the finest line between hard man, family man and damaged man. Tony Soprano is not a sheep in wolf's clothing. He's a wolf. But even wolves have qualities to commend them. The Sopranos screens on Sunday, Channel 9, 8.30pm and on Thursday at 9.30pm.

TELEVISION MOVIES Meadow is a typical stroppy teenager who wants all the rights of an adult and none of the responsibilities. Nephew Christopher (Michael Imperioli), impatient to be inducted into The Family, is in training with a few sidelines of his own. Meanwhile, his elderly Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) resents being passed over in the line of succession. Then there's Tony's crew, Paulie Walnuts who hangs out with the even more improbably named Big Pussy Bompensiero and strip-club owner Silvio Dante, who fancies himself as Al Pacino. Indeed, The Sopranos is riddled with more humor and self-irony than bullet holes.

But worst of all, no matter how he tries, Tony can't seem to do a thing right by the embittered and crotchety Livia (Nancy Marchand), his mother. Creator and producer David Chase, whose credits include Northern Exposure and The Rockford Files, directed and wrote the telemovie-length debut episode. He tried to sell the concept to MONDAY WEDNESDAY Profiler (page 32) Pig's Breakfast (page English Premier 31) League (page 32) Lateline (page 31) Sex And The City (page Life Support (page 38) 36) THURSDAY TUESDAY Beverly Hills 90210 The Cutting Edge: (page 32) Genocide The RPA (page 32) Judgment (page 32) The Big Picture: A Buffy (page 32) Paralyzing Fear (page Party Of Five (page 37) 39) LIANTED OFFER! SAVE PowerMac Studio Disp. AppleCentre USB Peripherals UNIVERSAL USB SERIAL BUS 350Mhz G4 with 1MB Cache SAVE iDance (Tilt Swivel stand for iMac in 6 colours) $69 10GB Hard Drive CITY WEST 333Mhz G3 Processor 4-Port USB Hub (Available in 5 Colours) $89 64MB RAM. 32X CD-ROM 617-643 SPENCER ST 32MB RAM, 6GB HDD Keyboard (extended USB in 5 colours) $89 16MB ATI RAGE 3D WEST MELBOURNE 24X CD ROM -in Ethernet TEL 03 9246 9000 56K V.90 Modem iDock (swivel stand 2 serial ports 3 USB hubs) Blue White Disp.

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Prices subject to change without notice Keith Connolly Mephisto (1981) Wednesday, SBS, 11.10pm a An Oscar winner combining brilliant cinematic technique, top-drawer literary antecedents and a story that is a real-life Faustian parable. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo took the best-foreign-film Academy Award with his Germanlanguage adaptation of a romana-clef by Klaus Mann, son of the great novelist Thomas Mann. The novel is a cautionary tale, loosely based on the story of his onetime brother-in-law, noted actor Gustav Grundgens, who declined to accompany the Mann family into self-imposed exile when the Nazis took power. Instead, the actor accepted top cultural posts, and survived both the Nazis and the war. The protagonist isn't quite so lucky (the film ends in 1936 with Klaus Maria Brandauer transfixed, almost literally, like a rabbit in a shooter's spotlight).

How he gets to this point makes for a chilling, fascinating and poignant narrative. We first see him in the 1920s. An ambitious egoist, he courts as a blatant career move Kristyna Janda, daughter of a noted Jewish academic, as well as professing support for a left-wing workers' theatre. Married, he rises to celebrity in the Berlin state theatre, and becomes a sensation with his performance of Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. By this time, the Nazis also are on the rise, and when they come to power he rejects his wife and is vouched for by Nazisupporting actress Christine Harbort.

Morally, it's all downhill from there..