Spoilers.

The final episode of The Sopranos aired on HBO in the US last night, bringing to an end the award-winning drama series. First airing in 1999, the show spanned six series and captured the hearts and minds of viewers all over the world. In recent times, when lowest-common-denominator television masquerades as intellectual just by name-dropping classical literature, or paying lip-service to international events and sentiments, The Sopranos stood alone as being a genuinely intelligent, captivating and frighteningly realistic piece of entertainment.

In many ways, The Sopranos is the antithesis of modern US television. Compared with recent successes such as Lost and 24, it can move glacially slowly. And for a show that, superficially at least, is about the mafia, it’s not uncommon for whole episodes to focus almost entirely on domestic life, on long, drawn out therapy sessions, or other more mundane affairs. And yet, on the flip side, characters can be snuffed out in an instant, friends can become enemies in a heartbeat - what is the bread and butter of most TV shows is often glanced over in The Sopranos, and the show is all the better for it.

All that being said, the last episode was something of a disappointment. In the hour-long episode, very little was definitively resolved. Supposedly, series creator David Chase intended for the penultimate episode to actually be the last episode, the series ending with Tony Soprano settling into his bed in a safe-house holding an automatic weapon. In truth, it would have been a better ending than the actual finale.

Over those final 60 minutes, the feud with Phil was brought to a conclusion, only to be replaced by  the imminent threat of the FBI and characters from Tony’s past finally exacting revenge. By in large, the main characters remained unchanged. AJ was still struggling to find his place in life, Meadow was still planning on a career in law, Paulie was still loyal to his boss and Tony was still under pressure. That the final episode didn’t end with one of the many ghosts from the past in the diner taking a pop at Tony, or with the FBI knocking on his door, signals to me that nobody really wants The Sopranos to end - not the fans, the writers, or the network.  I’d be surprised if, down the line, The Sopranos wasn’t revisited in a movie or mini-series.

Channel 4’s Peep Show comes perhaps second only to Curb Your Enthusiasm when it comes to televisual sitcoms. Forget The Office, Peep Show is the smartest, freshest and funniest sitcom to come out of Britain ever.

(That Mitchell & Webb Look is horrendous, though)

So when it was announced that the writers and stars of Peep Show were bringing their shtick to the big screen as a tale of former-friends-turned-bitter-enemies set in the tacky, phoney world of magic, I was thrilled.

And in the end, it’s a little disappointing. Perhaps I’ve myself to blame - it is as advertised really, Peep Show set in the magic world. What’s in the film is straight from the TV series - Mitchell & Webb play very similar characters to the ones they’re famous for, there’s the out-of-nowhere offensive putdowns and one-liners, the akward exchanges with women, and so on - but The Magicians still falls short.

For whilst The Magicians is very much derivative of Peep Show, not everything has made it across. Foremost, there is a lack of connection with the characters or the situations - a key ingredient of the TV show’s success. The supporting characters are largely one-dimensional, and it struggles to maintain laughs over the running time.

So, we’re left with a decent comedy, if not one that fully capitalises on its heritage.