Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopranos with the Talking Sopranos Podcast, Hosted by Michael Imperioli & Steve Schirripa

The Sopra­nos pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 10, 1999, and tele­vi­sion did not change for­ev­er — or rather, not right away. Though its treat­ment of the life of mid-lev­el New Jer­sey mob boss Tony Sopra­no drew large num­bers of ded­i­cat­ed view­ers right away, few could have imag­ined dur­ing the show’s eight-year run how com­plete­ly its suc­cess would even­tu­al­ly rewrite the rules of dra­mat­ic TV. More than twen­ty years lat­er, near­ly all of us place the begin­ning of our ongo­ing tele­vi­su­al “gold­en age” at the broad­cast of The Sopra­nos’ first episode. You can hear that epoch-mak­ing 50 min­utes dis­cussed in depth on the first episode of the new pod­cast Talk­ing Sopra­nos (YouTube — Apple — Spo­ti­fy), whose hosts Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa know the series more inti­mate­ly than most — not least because they were on it.

Fans know Impe­ri­oli and Schirri­pa as Tony’s pro­tégé Christo­pher Molti­san­ti and Tony’s broth­er-in-law Bob­by Bac­calieri. On Talk­ing Sopra­nos they “fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside,” announces the pod­cast’s descrip­tion, which also promis­es “inter­views with addi­tion­al cast mem­bers, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, pro­duc­tion crew and spe­cial guests.”

Among these voic­es there is, of course, one siz­able absence: star James Gan­dolfi­ni, Tony Sopra­no him­self, who died in 2013. But it shows promise that, just four­teen episodes in, the pod­cast has already brought on Edie Fal­co, who played Tony’s wife Carmela; Robert Iler, their son A.J. Sopra­no; Jamie-Lynn Sigler, their daugh­ter Mead­ow Sopra­no; and Michael Rispoli, the first sea­son’s short-lived Jack­ie Aprile Sr.

None of these actors would have made their mark on the show with­out the work of cast­ing direc­tors Geor­gianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, who also make an appear­ance on the pod­cast, as does co-exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and some­time direc­tor Hen­ry Bronchtein. You can down­load Talk­ing Sopra­nos on its web site, sub­scribe to it on Apple Pod­casts and else­where, or even watch it on Youtube. If you’d like to sup­ple­ment all this with an even greater wealth of detail, pick up a copy of Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wal­l’s book The Sopra­nos Ses­sions, an episode-by-episode analy­sis fea­tur­ing inter­views with fig­ures includ­ing series cre­ator David Chase. Nev­er has there been a bet­ter time to do a Sopra­nos re-watch of your own — and if you nev­er watched it in the first place, well, bet­ter a cou­ple of decades late than nev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Mau­rice Sendak Ani­mat­ed; James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Sendak’s Sto­ry “In The Night Kitchen”

James Gan­dolfi­ni Shows Kinder, Soft­er, Gen­tler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.