HBO's The Sopranos is still one of the greatest shows ever made, but the crime dramas that came after it pushed harder in different directions. Peaky Blinders, Boardwalk Empire and The Wire each outshined it in distinct ways, from pace and spectacle to scope and realism.
Peaky Blinders is a British historical crime drama set in post-World War I Birmingham, England, and the series is more visually stunning and fast-paced than The Sopranos. Boardwalk Empire widens the frame beyond suburban New Jersey, putting 1920s Atlantic City and Prohibition-era corruption at the center of the story. The Wire goes further still, taking a more journalistic approach as it examines the systemic problems inside Baltimore.
That matters because The Sopranos set a new standard for prestige television. It helped define what serious serialized drama could look like, and later crime dramas built on that foundation rather than replacing it. The genre has kept evolving, and these three series show how far it has moved since Tony Soprano first changed television.
The tension is not whether The Sopranos remains important. It does. The sharper question is whether its successors merely followed the path it opened or proved that the genre could do more than the landmark HBO drama ever did. On the evidence of Peaky Blinders, Boardwalk Empire and The Wire, the answer is that they did both: they honored the template and pushed past it.