For its multitude of sins, The Sopranos is condemned to a purgatory of reruns.

Christopher, still mourning Adriana, was killed by Tony in a previous episode. Bobby, too, is dead; his widow Janice's narcissism competing with her public grief.

Silvio lies in a coma in hospital.

Paulie, with his grey wings, is last seen sitting outside Satriale's, a tortured, solitary, grounded eagle. Paulie, along with Junior, may be one of the few characters without a drop of humanity. That is his tragedy.

Tony loves his family and, given the life he was born into and chose, that is his.

In the last scene, which polarised viewers in the US, Tony, Carmela, AJ and Meadow munch onion rings in a diner.

After some flipping, Tony chooses the 1981 hit 'Don't Stop Believin' by Journey on the juke box. After a war which saw many of his men die, Tony had Phil Leotardo whacked. In the diner, a shady character looks over at Tony, goes to the bathroom and, midconversation, this glorious, epic series . . . in which FBI agents, therapists, lawyers and priests had as many moral questions hanging over their heads as mobsters . . . abruptly endsf with 10 seconds of black, silent screen.

Writer/creator David Chase always ends his scenes moments before you expect, except when he pans out to reveal one of his grand oil paintings: like when Tony and Paulie met Butch, Albie and Little Carmine in an abandoned warehouse that looked like it was painted in sorrowful, portentous blue and grey for an operatic tragedy in La Scala. Was the black screen designed to imply that Tony gets hit and Chase couldn't bear to pull the trigger? (Bobby once said, "You probably don't ever hear it when it happens, right?") Is it a blank canvas for us to decide what happens next? Or did Chase realise that no ending would satisfy viewers, so he decided to forgo one altogether?

In one scene during the finale, the Twilight Zone plays on a TV.

A voice says, "The television industry is preoccupied with talent and quality and the writer is a major commodity." Was Chase fed-up with the endless speculation about how it would end? They're his characters, after all, not ours. (If so, it didn't exactly work as the diner scene was immediately copied by Hillary Clinton to promote her campaign song. ) This was a confusing and petulant denouement. Apparently, Chase wanted 30 seconds of black screen. HBO gave him 10. Either way, Tony is left in the diner, forever looking over his shoulder, wondering when his time will come.

Although Tony's therapist dumped him, believing he was a sociopath using her to sharpen his skills of deception, we are still fascinated by therapy.

Sarah, Duchess of York, was painfully honest answering Dr Pamela Connolly in Shrink Rap, an interview masquerading as therapy. In one long word, she told Connolly to bring it on:

"Goasdeepasyoulike." The intro had that weird muzak, like one of those Discovery Channel profiles about serial killers who eat their victims. But this had a twist. "I ate my feelings, " Fergie said, "I ate my life."

Connolly said: "As a clinical psychologist, I'm intrigued to examine Sarah's personality and coping mechanisms." As a what now? Let's be honest here.

Connolly, who complimented her guest/client before asking prurient questions about her childhood, is here to make salacious TV. Fergie's earliest memory is of a Ken and Cindy in a red car. "Barbie wasn't alive then, " she said, showing vulnerability, humour and likeability. Shrink Rap's talk of mirroring, re-traumatising and breaking behavioural patterns made repetitive, gobbledeegook TV. If Prince Philip saw this, he would have burst an artery. In his day you rolled out of bed, grunted at your valet and just got on with it.

Victoria Beckham: Coming To America began life as a sixepisode "reality" show but was since cut to a one-off "special".

In other words, it was a pilot that didn't get picked up. Posh Spice is one underfed, overmanufactured skelebrity and every vacuum-packed adlib here was scripted. She claims to look forward to some semblance of "normali'y", feigns selfdeprecation and has a wellstaged faceoff in a diner with celebrity public enemy number one . . . Perez Hilton. The paparazzi, piled high against the window, looked like they were peering at an alien reptile in a zoo who lives on flashbulbs and water alone. Posh doesn't want to eat the cookie put in front of her. But she could quite possibly swallow Perez Hilton whole.

Reviewed
The Sopranos RTE
Two Shrink Rap Channel Four
Victoria Beckham: Coming to America ITV 1