The Sopranos: parents' guide

Graphic and frequent: close-range shootings, a man's head blown off, beatings with bats and fists, a corpse cut up and its head bagged, and a pregnant dancer beaten to death by her boyfriend. A therapist is raped in a parking garage stairwell in season 3.

Constant. Plugged In estimated roughly one f-word per minute, and racial and ethnic slurs, homophobic insults and crude sexual talk are everyday speech for the mob characters. The UK ratings board flags very strong language in many episodes.

Sex or nudity appears in almost every episode: topless dancers fill the strip club where the mobsters meet, sex scenes include nudity, and affairs and prostitution are routine. Sexual talk, straight and gay, is graphic.

Heavy drinking and smoking throughout. Christopher's heroin addiction is shown, with on-screen use, relapses and an intervention. Teens drink and use drugs at a high school party, and the mob profits from dealing.

Killings are handled matter-of-factly, which makes them more chilling. A racehorse dies in a stable fire, a man high on heroin accidentally crushes his fiancée's dog, a man hangs himself, the boss's son tries to drown himself, and a mistress dies by suicide.