More genuinely saddening was the death in June of veteran actress Nancy Marchand, who played the pivotal role of Tony's joyless mother, Livia. Marchand had suffered from lung cancer for the entire run of the show, and finally succumbed during the show's post-second-season break.

Then just before filming was to begin for the third season, officials in New Jersey's Essex County told HBO that the show was no longer allowed to shoot scenes on county property because of mounting pressure from local Italian-Americans who were offended by the series' so-called negative ethnic stereotypes. (Officials of Union, Middlesex and Passaic counties, however, were quick to point out that "The Sopranos" was welcome on their turf anytime.)

Faced with filling the large plot hole left by Marchand's passing, and perhaps taking to heart criticism that the second season never approached the storytelling majesty of the initial 13 episodes, "Sopranos" creator David Chase asked HBO for additional time to write the third season. He got it -- and now "The Sopranos" has a belated season premiere on Sunday. Is there a lot riding on these new episodes, you ask? Is the Godfather Catholic?

The two-hour premiere is made up of two separate episodes, wildly divergent in tone, both written by Chase. In a bold stroke that (luckily) pays off, Chase eases us back into the action in the aftermath of last season's bloodbath -- you may remember Tony, Silvio and Paulie sending FBI informant Pussy to sleep with the fishes -- until the second hour.

The first hour, "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood," is a framing device to set up the season ahead. The feds are getting closer than ever to Tony (amazing James Gandolfini), and we see the Sopranos through the eyes of the FBI agents who are bugging and tailing them.

The feds have worked up an elaborate plot to get inside the Soprano house and plant a bug in the basement, where Tony goes to hold business conversations. Each member of the household is under surveillance and the family's phones are tapped. Amusingly, though, the agents get little more for their efforts than an up-close look at a suburban family's excruciatingly mundane routine.

In these unguarded moments, the Sopranos seem like the most boring, ordinary people in the world. Tony and his wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), make small talk about flossing and the importance of dietary roughage. Daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), now a freshman at Columbia University, is more focused on studying than partying. Typical teenager Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) cuts class with his buddies to smoke cigarettes and bitch about how unfair it is for the principal to ban skateboards at school. The only criminal behavior the agents witness is the Sopranos' maid stealing cutlery and gourmet capers from the pantry. ("They have so much stuff," she tells her husband.)

From the FBI's point of view, nothing much happens in the first episode. But, for viewers, this lively string of vignettes cagily draws us back into the deceptively normal ebb and flow of Tony Soprano's daily life. Remember, when we last saw him, Tony had just killed one of his best friends and was lying to his widow -- not exactly heroic behavior. Chase and director Allan Coulter remind us of Tony's duality, and our ambiguity toward him, by staging the season opener like an overture, with the show's two visions of Tony -- average middle-aged family guy, coldblooded gangster -- represented by two dueling songs on the soundtrack.

The feds' song is the Police's "Every Breath You Take" ("I'll be watching you ..."); the Soprano family's song is the swaggering instrumental "Theme From 'Peter Gunn.'" In a long, riveting surveillance sequence, the two songs alternate, bleed into each other and finally become inseparable.

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