How The Sopranos began as a comedy about a mother

Twenty-five years ago this week, the groundbreaking crime drama premiered on HBO in the US. In a 2006 interview, its creator David Chase told the BBC about its very unlikely genesis.

"You need to write about your mother. Your mother is money in the bank."

So The Sopranos writer and producer David Chase told the BBC's Mark Lawson about the unlikely inspiration behind his groundbreaking crime drama in an extended 2006 interview.

As he recalled, his wife Denise had long been convinced that his mother was comedy gold, and that other people would see it too. She wasn't the only one who thought this: colleagues on TV shows he was working on would say the same thing when they heard his stories about her, but he struggled to know how to translate them to the screen. "I thought, 'why would anybody want to see that? A TV producer with a sort of crazy overbearing mother":[]}