KEY POINTS:
As celebrity interviews go, they don't come more airbrushed and bland than the NBC's Mark Lauer's exclusive chat with the Windsor boys at Clarence House, on TV3 on Monday night.
Princes Harry and William came across as nice, earnest, rather dull young men, who, despite their abnormal lives under constant scrutiny, have turned out remarkably average.
The two rosy-cheeked English lads, wishing to pay tribute to their mother 10 years after her death and promote their concert in her memory, dutifully delivered the misty-eyed memories. That is, when they were allowed to speak.
The over-riding impression in the hour-long audience was that they could barely get a word in between all the sentimental recaps of Princess Diana's life, cute photos of them as babies and, most infuriating, the promos telling us what was coming next.
It was an hour full of hollow promises. The princes would speak for the first time and at length, we were constantly told, on such sensitive subjects such as Harry's mission in Iraq and Will's break-up with Kate Middleton.
The boys barely got started on the saintliness of their mother before they were cut off for another promo about what they would, or rather would not, be saying next. The lengthiest thing about it was Lauer's leading questions. The boys were constantly cut off in mid-sentence, as Lauer helpfully told them what they wanted to say, and we were left not much the wiser.
The sole insightful moment was when they were asked what they'd really like to do, if they hadn't been born royal. Enthusiasm suddenly lit up in their eyes as they talked about wanting to be a helicopter pilot and safari guide. Just for one moment, you got a sense of two young men trapped in a gilded cage.
It was a brief blip in the soft-focus portrait of charming princes living in an enchanted cocoon, one to which only the most deferential television personality interviewer would be granted access. And in the claustrophobic, velvety room in Clarence House, with its stifling air of privilege, there certainly wasn't any room for anger, not even about the antics of the press.
Happily for viewers, The Sopranos mob have no one to manage their image and they are notoriously resistant to anger management.
The best drama on the box returns to offer some appointment telly at last but that rude interruption in the last season means we have to struggle to pick up the threads.
Perhaps TV One could have done us the courtesy of repeating the few episodes we got last time so we could get back into the tensions and rhythm of the season.
Still, even that gross disruption couldn't take the delicious irony out of Tony's fading gratitude for his return to life after nearly dying in a shooting: "Every day is a gift, but does it always have to be a pair of socks?"
The chief of the New Jersey mob might be settling back into the boring routine of his brutally banal existence, but the show is mesmerising. Actress Edie Falco's Carmela is particularly riveting as we see the doubt and suspicions that flicker over her ever-hardening face.
Every storyline is a cracker - his twisted relationship with sister Janice, his cunning scuttling of Carmela's spec house so she'll get back to cooking him dinner, Vince's abortive attempt to live the gay life in a twee country tourist town.
Those references to New Orleans are setting the tone that is making waiting for the end so compelling. In the brooding, menacing swamp of Tony's life, surely Hurricane Karma is a-coming.
