Lorraine Bracco's HGTV My Big Italian Adventure is a reminder of how The Sopranos is hard to escape

The New Yorker

"Bracco is not a household name, yet her place in the American imagination somehow justifies the extravagance of My Big Italian Adventure," Carrie Batton says of Bracco's Sicily-set home renovation series that premiered in October. "In fact, the show echoes, in its way, several themes from The Sopranos, which remains utterly beloved twenty years after its début. There are dedicated Sopranos-meme accounts and an entire industry of Sopranos merchandise; in 2019, a Sopranos convention was held in New Jersey, where the show is set. Three of the series’ most adored stars—Michael Imperioli, Steve Schirripa, and Drea de Matteo—make podcasts about The Sopranos. None of these ventures are particularly novel or well executed, but they all allow us to continue living in the fantasy world created by the show. Its story lines and even its vernacular have become a sort of pop-culture lingua franca. You might have to go all the way to Italy to escape it."