It was 20 years ago Jan. 10 that the world got its first glimpse of Tony Soprano.

Or rather — since they didn't yet know his name — they got a glimpse of a gangster, cigar in mouth, cruising down the New Jersey Turnpike as toll booths, refineries, swamps, freight yards, and pizza joints rolled past.

You might say the opening of HBO's "The Sopranos," repeated at the top of each episode for six seasons, was the ultimate Jersey joke — a thumbnail sketch of the Garden State, as a snarky outsider might see it. The only thing missing was a mosquito landing on James Gandolfini's nose.

Yet the joke was not on New Jersey.It was on everyone else.

Not only did "The Sopranos" rack up 21 Primetime Emmys, five Golden Globes, critical hosannas, and a worldwide fan base, not only did it transform a cast of mostly unknowns into stars and launch a new golden age of television, it had the accidental side effect of putting New Jersey on the map as an unlikely capital of cool.

Proof? You can still see it rolling down the Turnpike, up Route 17, and across the side streets of Bloomfield, twice a week.

"The Sopranos Sites Tour," ferrying busloads of fans to such hot spots as the Kearny address of the fictional Satriale's Pork Store, and the real restaurant in Bloomfield where Tony — in the show's famous, ambiguous final episode in 2007 — ate what may have been his last batch of fried onion rings, has been a going concern for 18 years.

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Many of those tourists are foreign. They come from the U.K., Australia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Taiwan and Brazil, eager to see the glories of our decaying infrastructure, our strip clubs, our wondrous airport and majestic Pulaski Skyway.

"We got to go on the Turnpike, the bridges, and some of industrial areas, and the dock," said John Jenkins, a visitor from Wales who was taking the tour recently with his wife, Janice.

"It's great to actually be in the real places and locations where the actors filmed," he said.

What made "The Sopranos," which debuted Jan. 10, 1999, such a game-changer? It's hard to say what makes anything click — but a series of early, fateful decisions gave David Chase's black-comic crime drama its unique mystique.

One thing, obviously, was the brilliant casting. Who else could have been Tony Soprano, if not the late, great Gandolfini of Park Ridge (though Ray Liotta was apparently in the running)?

Where could you find the equal of Lorraine Bracco (she played Tony's psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi), Edie Falco (Tony's wife, Carmela Soprano), Michael Imperioli (Christopher), Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior), Tony Sirico (Paulie Walnuts), Nancy Marchand (Tony's mother, Livia), Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy), the E Street Band's Steven Van Zandt (Silvio), and all the rest of them?

Made in Jersey

But another decision, made early on, was equally momentous. "The Sopranos" was not merely to be about New Jersey (too many crime dramas had been set in New York, Chase said). "The Sopranos" would actually be filmed here. Not in Los Angeles. Not in Toronto.

The actual streets, houses, bridges, highways and parking lots of Kearny, Lodi, Harrison, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, West Orange, Montclair, North Caldwell, Paterson and Wayne, not to mention the boardwalk in Asbury Park, would figure in the action — and also help give "The Sopranos" its special atmosphere.

"The location is one of the characters, one of the actors," said fan Janice Jenkins, wife of John, who came along for the bus tour in December.

Like the other "Sopranos" sightseers, she had come to see things that many of us would consider prosaic.

Satin Dolls, for example: the Route 17 go-go bar that was the show's Bada Bing! club. Or Holsten's, the eatery in Bloomfield where Tony has his famous "last supper" in Season 6, Episode 21 (in his honor, the tourists are treated to Holsten's famous onion rings).

"We always updated the tour while the show was running, adding new locations," says tour guide Marc Baron, an actor who was a bit player in several "Sopranos" episodes (he was the waiter who served Carmela and Meadow at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan).

"I think 'The Sopranos' has had a positive effect. It brought a lot of attention to New Jersey," he said.

The New Jersey setting was key: it made "The Sopranos" a distinctively suburban crime drama. And that was new.

The old gangster movies of the 1930s were set in urban slums. Conversely, the mafia dons and soldiers of "The Godfather" lived apart — in enormous compounds on Long Island or at Lake Tahoe.

But Tony Soprano lived in a McMansion (in North Caldwell, as it happens), ate out at local mom and pop restaurants, and sent his kids to parochial school. He was, literally, the mobster next door.

"It's like a nice, quiet, suburban neighborhood," said Christopher Henry, another fan on the tour, who was visiting from Guatemala. "It's like normal people, doing something a little extreme, which is the mob. But still living normal lives. The part about balancing family life and work life, you can actually feel for the characters in that way.

"Except for all the whacking and all that."

There is, of course, something inherently ludicrous about a mobster living in the suburbs who makes regular visits to a psychiatrist. Which may account for another unusual feature of "The Sopranos": humor.

The old mob movies, like "Little Caesar" (1931), "Public Enemy" (1931) and "Scarface" (1932) were about excitement, pure and simple: the chatter of machine guns, the squeal of getaway cars. The first "Godfather" film from 1972 (known simply, and reverently, as "One" to the "Sopranos" characters) raised the genre to the level of tragedy: the vendettas, the betrayals, the fallen-angel descent of Michael Corleone, are very nearly operatic.

But "The Sopranos" was funny. A mob kingpin in analysis, his mother scheming to whack him from her nursing home, his protege Christopher taking screenwriting classes and fretting about his "story arc," Uncle Junior getting hit in the head with a boom mic during his trial — all of this is absurd, grotesque, laughable.

But not just. And that may be the ultimate key to what made "The Sopranos" different: You couldn't pin it down.

"It's a family drama, a psychological drama, and it's sometimes a comedy," Baron said. "You don't know when it's going to shift gears, and that's what keeps you going."

A trend-setter

This recipe, in fact, became the model for many of the cable shows that followed in Tony Soprano's wake.

"The Sopranos," it bears repeating, was the great benchmark, the turning point for TV. It upended the industry, putting cable at the center of excitement and innovation, and making the networks scurry to catch up. It led to a binge-watching culture with new habits of viewing and new expectations.

It made movie actors like Jessica Lange and Matthew McConaughey eager to star on TV. It made critics declare that the small screen had replaced the big one as the prestige medium ("The Sopranos" could turn that back around, when an upcoming "Sopranos" prequel, "The Many Saints of Newark," hits the big screen in 2020). It made TV darker, deeper, and more essential than ever before.

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And many of the shows that "The Sopranos" spawned followed in its footsteps. They, too, were an unstable mixture of comedy, drama, horror. They, too, often featured bland suburban settings. "The Americans" was about the spies next door. "Breaking Bad" was about the meth dealer next door. "Homeland" was about the terrorist next door.

Naturally, not all Jerseyans were happy with the kind of attention "The Sopranos" brought to our beloved truss bridges, toll roads and gin mills, just as not all Italian-Americans were happy that it perpetuated Italian gangster stereotypes (the "Godfather" movies and the mob films of the 1930s caused similar protests).

But there's no denying that "The Sopranos" made New Jersey, to much of the outside world, seem cool. Possibly for all the wrong reasons — but nevertheless, truly, genuinely cool.

We recall, with affection, the New Orleans cabbie, back around 2000, who was thrilled to have Jersey tourists in his taxi.

Yes, that's New Orleans as in jazz, voodoo, Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, alligators — traditionally, the most exotic, exciting city in America. But not to him.

"Are you really from New Jersey?" he asked eagerly. "Is it like it is in 'The Sopranos'? Are there mobsters?"

There are mobsters in New Orleans too, we might have said. Get your own show.

If you go

♦"Sopranos Sites Tour," from On Location Tours, 10 a.m.Saturdays; Thursdays and Saturdays starting in the spring. Bus leaves at corner of 39th street and 7th Avenue. $62 per person; reservations required. 212 913-9780 or www.onlocationtours.com

♦Sopranos Film Festival. Jan. 9 to 14. Screenings of "Sopranos"-related films, discussions with series creator David Chase, executive producers Terence Winter, Matthew Weiner and Ilene S. Landress, and cast members.At IFC Center and SVA Theatre in New York. ifccenter.com/series/the-sopranos-film-festival.

Final meal?:At Holsten's, where 'The Sopranos' ended, customers dish about a possible prequel

More:Big-screen 'Sopranos' prequel reportedly in the works

That's a wrap:(Archive) Going out with a Bada Bing! - 'Sopranos' wraps up at strip-joint hangout

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com; Twitter: @jimbeckerman1