The highest honors in television will be handed out tomorrow at the Emmys ceremony in Los Angeles, where nominees range from “The Crown” and “Succession” to “Beef.” Whoever wins, a credible case can be made that each show—and, in fact, the TV industry as a whole—owes a debt to “The Sopranos,” a series that began its revolutionary run a quarter century ago this past week. The significance of “The Sopranos” was clear to Nancy Franklin from the start.The New Yorker’sTV critic when the show premièred,Franklin recognizedthat “The Sopranos,” with its richly layered story lines, self-aware scripts, and ornately nuanced characters, represented a break from earlier TV, even as its humanizing portrait of a New Jersey Mob boss raised ethical dilemmas for the viewer. Arriving a year after the début of “Sex and the City,” another groundbreaking series on HBO, “The Sopranos” ushered in the era of “prestige TV,” and initiated the exodus from traditional programming that continues today. “There has certainly never been anything like it on TV, and on network TV there nevercouldbe anything like it,” Franklin wrote. “It goes out on a limb that doesn’t even exist at the networks.” | 
