It is a shocking scene. Giovanni 'Johnny' Soprano fires his gun next to his wife Livia's ear, intending to give her the shock of her life. But she sits unmoved, even as smoke shrouds her headscarf. 

This is one of the tensest moments in The Many Saints of Newark, a violent, darkly funny gangster filmGangsters have been a common feature in film from the 1930s to the present day. released in several territories today. But it is not just any mob movie. It is a prequel to The Sopranos (1999 - 2007): an 86-episode epic often named the greatest television series of all time.

That show ended with a cliffhanger. Show-runner David Chase toyed with writing a film about a corrupt police force starring the same cast, but scrapped the idea after actor James Gandolfini - who played lead character Tony Soprano - passed away. Chase finally determined to make a prequel, eventually casting Gandolfini's son Michael in his father's role.

Michael is not the only one with big shoes to fill. The Sopranos remains acclaimed for its ambition, layered characters and break with gangster film conventions. The Guardian says: "It hastened TV's transformation into a medium where intelligence, experimentation and depth were treasured."

It was the big band that helped TV become respectable. Before, it was regarded as lightweight and low-browSomething not intellectual or cultured. The term comes from the sinister 19th -Century practice of phrenology, which believed that human intelligence could be measured by the shape of the skull., filled with endless talking that Chase called "yak-yak-yak-yak". It was always inferior to film. For a movie actor to take a TV role was to admit failure.

Some saw TV as mind-numbing. Comedian Groucho Marx once joked: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." Others attacked it as the new opium of the peopleA phrase used by the philosopher Karl Marx to describe religion, which he saw as distracting working class people from the misery of their daily lives.. "If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set," raged John Lennon, "then there'd be peace."

The Sopranos changed all that. Critics have declared The Golden Age of Television, with slow-burning plots and antihero characters in the mould of Tony Soprano. Movie stars now queue up for TV roles.

Many wonder whether some television now qualifies as great art. Some argue that TV drama has taken the role of the Victorian novelThe middle of the 19th Century saw an international explosion of novels. Many of the most acclaimed novels of all time date to this period, including Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871 - 2).. Charles Dickens' novels were serialisedDickens wrote most of his novels chapter-by-chapter in weekly magazines. The chapters were then edited and collected in books. into chapters and followed dozens of characters across London society. The WireAcclaimed TV series about crime and politics in Baltimore. Critics called it Dickensian so often that the writers began using the phase in their scripts. does the same in modern-day Baltimore.

Literature and television have often worked well together. From Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, classic novels often make classic television.

Some say television is too easy. Great art makes us work. When we read Dickens, we have to create our own vision of characters and scenes. When we watch television, everything is laid out.

A literary masterpiece is made great by its individuality. As poet Adam Kirsch says: "It is voice, tone, the sense of the author's mind at work, that are the essence of literature." TV, the product of numerous writers, actors, producers, editors and technicians, does not allow us this sort of raw brush with artistic genius.

Of course, say some. Great literature and great television have much in common, from compelling stories to psychological insight. And many of the world's greatest writers, from Homer to Shakespeare, created stories for a wide audience. If Shakespeare was writing today, he would have a contract with Netflix. The Iliad would be the new Game of Thrones. To claim otherwise is snobbery. 

Not a chance, say others. True art is the pure creative endeavour of a single genius. It thrives through striking imagery, thought-provoking insight and originality. And it exists for its own sake. In contrast, even the best television is a product of compromise, created by a team. It exists, at least partly, to bring in viewers, acclaim and money. Serious art should have no such constraints.