I enjoyed it but I can’t imagine it being of an awful lot of interest to anyone who hadn’t watched the show (maybe Chase made it for fans but it should really have stood up in its own right, IMHO).
The cast were very good but so far as those who were playing younger versions of characters we’d seen onscreen were concerned, it was quite distracting- my wife and I were constantly going “oh he’s really like Junior” (I would never have thought of Corey Stoll in that role, but he was great”) or “nah, I just don’t buy him as Paulie” (Paulie was always our favourite and Siroco was an impossible act to follow - kudos to the actor for being totally unrecognisable from his role in No Time to Die, however). Young Silvio was the winner in that regard, however (Farmagia was excellent but to me was more like Carmela than Marchand - which maybe adds to the Freudian elements for Tony).
The “new” cast had an easier job (technically we did see Tony’s dad onscreen before but hey who’s going to argue with Jon Bernthal), and it was a nice reminder of how good (and underused) Alessandro Nivola is (came across like an Italian michael Fassbender at times). Ray Liotta did a great job in distinguishing his characters.
An enjoyable enough couple of hours, while the ending did add to one’s sympathy for Tony - no wonder he was such a mess - and was totally in keeping for the petty, vindictive man that Junior was. But it won’t go down as the classic that The Sopranos did.
