This is the season where The Sopranos stopped being a great mob drama and started being a great tragedy. The diagnosis is over. The cancer remains.

If the first season of The Sopranos was about the shock of the diagnosis —Tony Soprano’s sudden collapse and his frantic attempt to reconcile a doting father with a brutal killer—then Series 2 is about the messy reality of treatment . It’s the season where the novelty wears off, the panic subsides, and the slow, corrosive work of living with oneself begins.