Marvin Gayed
Christmas time, mistletoe and wine, DVD box sets arrive just in time. The Sopranos Season Six found itself removed from the gift wrap yesterday, and just in time, as Christmas Day telly was, well, shit. (The Mighty Boosh Live, the George And Mildred movie - Yootha's last hurrah - Dylan Moran Live and Green Wing Seasons One and Two all appeared under the tree too.) We've been waiting patiently for the penultimate Sopranos while it played out, unwatched, on E4, having missed the first couple of episodes. Now it is here. And it is already epochal. Members Only, written by Terence Winter and directed by Tim Van Patten (here we go again), pulled off a great trick: it seemed to be a fairly humdrum rounding-up of ongoing storylines - Carmela's spec-house, the ghost of Adriana, Bobby and Janice getting all domestic with their baby and his train set, Tony developing a taste for sushi - and honed in on Eugene, who wanted out, but they pulled him back in, to the extent that he hung himself, to release his wife and kids from the lifestyle. This seemed like the big story of episode one, but then, in the last moments, Uncle Junior went looking for his teeth, came back with a gun and shot Tony in the stomach, to the tune of Comes Love by Artie Shaw. A punch in the guts. The Sopranos is back, back, back!

Episode Two (of course we watched Episode Two straight afterwards), Join The Club, written by David Chase himself and directed by David Nutter, was a conceptual one that steered clear of the now-familiar dream-sequence surreality and had Tony living the life he might have lived while he lay in a coma at the hospital, a gaping wound in his belly left undressed and open. We saw him as a legit Tony, with wife and kids at home while he was away on business with a brief case, attending some sales convention. All credit to Chase, this imagined diversion was entirely diverting - the parallel universe was as intriguing as the real one. There's a subplot about terrorism, seeded by a warning the two Feds give to Christopher at the pork shop - we'll see where that one goes. Meanwhile, Tony's family gather round him, even Anthony Jr, who vows to kill Uncle Junior in vengeance for the accidental shooting. Coma-Tony discovers that he has Alzheimer's and in a moving final scene finds himself unable to call hom and tell his wife.

It's all good stuff. How will I get The Wire watched now? Happy Boxing Day.