The greatest show in TV history debuted 20 years ago today, on January 10, 1999. The Sopranos entered a world where HBO was still mostly known for movies edgy reality content, and basically rewrote the rules for an entire medium. For sure, there was good television before The Sopranos. But the wave of sharp, bleak, tough serialized dramas that followed in its wake can be directly attributed to the huge critical and commercial success The Sopranos enjoyed. TV can basically be divided into two ears, BS and AS: Before Sopranos and After.

If you are a child of the AS era and you haven’t really experienced The Sopranos first hand — or you haven’t revisisted the show since it went off the air — then there is no better day than today to check it out. In fact, HBO has the pilot available for free on their website. You can watch the whole thing right here even if you’re not a subscriber. (If you’re an Amazon Prime customer, the entire series is streaming there as well.)

My wife had never seen The Sopranos during its first run, so I rewatched it with her back in 2015. I loved the show when it was on, but if you’d ask me then, I would have said Mad Men or The Wire were better. After that full rewatch, I’m now fully on Team Sopranos forever. It holds up incredibly well. It is very much of its era, and yet it also anticipated so many currents moving through society. I mean, check out what AJ said he wanted to do with his life in the series finale:

David Chase was a genius. Happy 20th anniversary, The Sopranos fans.

Gallery — Shocking TV Twists Fans Actually Predicted:

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