Are you a fan of The Sopranos? If you are, here’s a trivia question: What was the very first scene of the show? Ponder that, and I’ll give you the answer in a moment or two.

The Sopranos, of course, was the HBO drama series that many say changed television forever. It told the story of Tony Soprano, a local mob boss in northern New Jersey. The twist: He was having panic attacks, and had sought refuge, reluctantly, with a psychiatrist. And the series went on, we saw the shrink, with increasing discomfort, try to address his issues professionally. Along the way we learnt about Soprano’s life – or lives, really, because he had the one at home, and then the one that involved his business, which was low-level racketeering and occasionally murder.

The Sopranos seemed to be about men, but it was actually about women.Credit:

The show debuted 25 years ago this month. I was an editor at the online magazine Slate at the time, and I stayed up with one of my writers to watch the show and post an account of it very late that evening. It was the early days of internet publishing and was a pretty cutting-edge thing to do at the time.

Hard to forget that dynamic opening song, and the now indelible images of Soprano driving home to Jersey and ending up at his suburban mini-mansion. The pockmarked landscape of New Jersey was an important........

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