After 86 episodes, 18 Emmy awards, and hundreds of garrottings, mob hits and savage beatings, The Sopranos – one of America’s great television dramas – comes to a climactic end tomorrow evening, with millions of viewers wondering: will Tony Soprano get whacked?

The fate of the New Jersey mob boss – a murdering, philandering sociopath who still manages to garner viewers’ sympathies with his very human anxieties and hang-ups – has become such a burning issue that millions of dollars have been bet on whether he survives, and national polls conducted on whether he should.

The final episode of the drama about murderous mob-sters who are also regular guys with money problems, children worries and other middle-class anxieties – Mr Soprano sees a psychiatrist – is set to rival the denouements of M*A*S*H, Dallas and Seinfeld as a seminal American television event.

Gambling is largely illegal in the US, but two offshore, online gambling sites – Bodog. com and BetUS.com – have received thousands of wagers on whether the big guy gets it. (Mr Soprano is 1 to 3 on to survive; 2 to 1 to finish Sunday night sleeping with the fishes).

The sites are also taking bets on the fate of Carmela, Mr Soprano’s wife, and such characters as Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri. The feeling among most gamblers about whether “Walnuts” will survive seems to be: fugheddaboudit.

With Baghdad in flames, and the widest-open US presidential election since 1928, Fairleigh Dickinson University decided to poll the biggest issue of this weekend: did people actually want Tony Soprano to survive? Forty per cent said yes; another 40 per cent were not sure; the rest wanted him dead.

What is almost certain for Mr Soprano, who has been played with mesmerising intensity for the past seven years by the actor James Gandolfini, is that there will be no redemption for him when the final credits roll tomorrow.

What set The Sopranos apart was a combination of fine acting, scriptwriting and compellingly complex characters, combining the utterly deviant with the banality of everyday life, and the stresses of fatherhood. (Although most fathers have never strangled to death a mob informer while touring a university campus with their daughter.)

Mr Soprano had as many problems running his family as he did his criminal empire. Somehow, despite his amoral and murderously repugnant behaviour, he managed to retain the audience’s loyalties.

“I’m a good guy, basically,” he told his therapist, Dr Jennifer Melfi, in a recent episode. “I love my family. There’s a balance. There’s a ying and yang.”

The yang was frequently rooted in shocking violence and Mr Soprano’s insatiable, predatory adultery, even with a one-legged Russian woman. The ying was that at moments, Mr Soprano appeared to have the sensibilities of a poet.

David Remnick, the New Yorker editor, described The Sopranos as “the richest achievement in the history of television.”

Numbers game

86 episodes
$1m per episode paid to Tony Soprano actor James Gandolfini
$52m paid to the entire cast in 2005
13.4m people watched the premier of season four, a ratings peak
75 deaths so far
$40 cost of four-hour Sopranos “tour”, taking in sights such as the Bada Bing strip club
1 second: the length of time Pizzaland restaurant - now famous for its association with the series - appears in the opening credits

Source: HBO, the-sopranos.com , On Location tours, CNN, Forbes.com

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2009
• The 100 Worst Movies of 2009
• The 100 Best Films of the Decade