How Tony Soprano Conquered the World: 25 Years of Global Guilt, Grit, and Goomahs

The Sopranos at 25: How a New Jersey Mob Boss Became the Planet’s Favorite Anti-Hero

By the time Tony Soprano lumbered onto international airwaves in January 1999, the Berlin Wall had been rubble for a decade, NATO was busy bombing Yugoslavia, and the world’s remaining superpower believed its biggest headache was a Oval Office cigar. Across the Atlantic, Silvio Berlusconi—part prime minister, part media emperor, part living indictment of Italian libel law—was demonstrating that corruption could be both televised and profitable. In other words, the planet was perfectly primed for a show that asked, in the politest New Jersey vernacular, “What if the guys running things are exactly as venal as you always suspected, only funnier?”

Viewers from São Paulo to Seoul did not tune in for cannoli recipes. They came for a mirror. Tony’s panic attacks struck a chord in Tokyo salarymen who also kept baseball bats in the trunk “just in case.” Carmela’s complicity in blood money resonated in Moscow, where a fur-coated middle class emerged from the same privatized rubble Tony fenced electronics through. And when Christopher tried to turn his mob stories into screenplays, film students in Mumbai recognized the hustle; Bollywood has been laundering plot since the talkies.

The show’s genius lay in exporting a very local pathology—North Jersey strip-mall mafiosi—via the universal language of late-capitalist dread. In Argentina, still hungover from its own IMF hangover, the Bada Bing! became a pop-up nightclub theme. Tel Aviv marketing firms coined the verb “to Soprano,” meaning to feign therapy while actually ordering a hit. Even Scandinavian social democracies, those perennial honor-roll students of governance, discovered that a surprising percentage of their tax-evasion cases involved shell companies named Satriale or Vesuvio. Turns out welfare states love organized crime too; it’s just better refrigerated.

International critics, never a group to miss a bandwagon, hailed The Sopranos as the moment television “grew up.” Translation: it learned to sulk, overeat, and demand Prozac like the rest of us. The French called it “Balzac with a Glock,” which is adorable coming from a culture that still worships Jerry Lewis. The Chinese bootleg edition—subtitled by someone who learned English from a Sopranos script—rendered “fuggedaboutit” as “please cease mental activity,” inadvertently achieving Zen profundity.

Diplomatically speaking, the series did what NATO summits could not: it aligned global elites around a shared vocabulary of nihilism. When a Brussels lobbyist texts “We may need a Pussy Bonpensiero solution,” everyone from Lagos to London knows someone’s about to sleep with the tilapia. The United Nations even screened the “Pine Barrens” episode for peacekeepers heading to the Balkans as a cautionary tale about what happens when two guys with guns get lost in the woods and start arguing over ketchup packets.

Of course, every empire eventually eats its own. Streaming algorithms now crank out gritty anti-heroes the way McDonald’s churns out McNuggets—uniform, salty, and suspiciously addictive. Yet none have replicated the original’s geopolitical bite. When a cartel boss in Tijuana binge-watches Tony’s therapy sessions, he isn’t marveling at narrative complexity; he’s taking notes on HR management. Somewhere in Pyongyang, a mid-level apparatchik is surely pitching “The Kims,” a prestige drama about a nuclear dynasty in emotional crisis. Supreme Leader has mother issues; ratings gold.

As the silver anniversary confetti settles, remember this: The Sopranos didn’t just predict the moral gray zone of the 21st century—it franchised it. From kleptocrats laundering villas on the Amalfi coast to crypto bros laundering reputations on podcasts, Tony’s central insight travels border-free: legitimacy is just another racket, and the only thing more dangerous than a guilty conscience is the invoice for keeping it quiet. The world has spent twenty-five years proving him right, one offshore account at a time.

And if that depresses you, fuggedaboutit. Therapy’s in the next room, cash only.