The Sopranos' Writers Room Drama Led to Birth of Blue Bloods
In some ways, it's hard to imagine two shows that are more polar opposites than The Sopranos and Blue Bloods. One follows the life and times of an anti-hero who we can't help but be fond of.
While the other charts the careers of generations of cops just trying to do the right thing in a world that's not always black and white.
But there are some similarities too. Both shows focus on the protagonists' chosen careers in terms of how they fit in with family life and its daily pressures. And that could just be because there is some crossover in the writing teams.
It's pretty widely known that David Chase created The Sopranos. But, like all good shows, he needed a writers' room to help him bring his idea to our screens.
When he first began penning scripts for what would become the biggest gangster show of all time, Chase turned to two writer friends to help him – married couple Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green.
The pair had previously worked alongside Chase in the 80s to write a little-known show called Almost Grown. Burgess and Green reconnected with Chase in the writers' room for The Sopranos and helped write and create 22 episodes of the show. Then, in 2006, they were gradually ousted by Chase and eventually sacked.
The story goes that Chase felt they were no longer writing a sufficient number of episodes and so he made life difficult for them, ostracising them from the rest of the writers in stages. Burgess reportedly had her chair moved so that Chase wouldn't have to look at her. And grievances from the past two decades were brought up and used to metaphorically 'whack' the pair.
And what did they do next? They created Blue Bloods.
And that may explain the similarities between the two. But if you thought things were much rosier for the couple in the Blue Bloods writers' room, think again.
Burgess and Green were keen for Blue Bloods to have much more focus on family life in the way that The Sopranos did. And while there are the regular family dinners and some crossover between what happens at home and on the job, they wanted to explore that side of things in much more detail.
The network disagreed and wanted the show to be more of a classic procedural. So, at the end of season 1, despite Blue Bloods drawing in huge numbers of viewers, the creators were axed in favour of others who were more in sync with the requirements of CBS execs.
And it wasn't just the writers who suffered an unceremonious early exit. Showrunner Ken Stanzel also left after falling out with Tom Selleck who, bizarrely enough, felt many of the scripts were too procedural.