Meet the daughters of Sex and the City
Four attractive, vivacious, successful women, impeccably dressed and coiffed and madeup, living and laughing and loving and losing in fabulous, fashionable Manhattan . . . One is married. Another’s getting over a messy break- up. One is sarcastic and single, another just a bit of a ditz. But at least they have each other.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, because you are about to hear it again. And again. Though Sex and the City called it quits in 2004, the hit cable comedy continues to resonate — and not just in five- night- aweek strip syndication, with all the saucy bits excised. No, I’m talking about the attack of the Sex clones, which officially starts this week.
Related, a new, estrogen- intensive hour- long comedy debuting Wednesday night on The WB, chronicles the disparate but endlessly intersecting lives of the four Sorelli sisters. Hot Properties, a traditional half- hour sitcom, is built around the rimshot chatterings of a quartet of New York real- estate agents, debuting Friday night on ABC and A- Channel. But as much as these shows have in common, they also could not be farther apart.
For one thing, Related isn’t awful — even though, as the eldest Sorelli, Spin City’s Jennifer Esposito has gone from pre- emptively channelling Drea De Matteo to an uncanny impression of Jennifer Anniston ( and her hair). And so on down the line, with Kiele Sanchez as a heartbroken therapist, venting her anguish with off- key karaoke; Lizzy Caplan as a flighty aspiring partyplanner; and Laura Breckenridge as the sheltered youngest, who ( gasp) decides to switch her college major from pre- med to experimental theatre.
Actually, the best thing about the show is its stellar support cast — Dead Like Me’s Callum Blue as Esposito’s “ perfect child- man” husband, SNL alum Christine Ebersol as daddy Sorelli’s fiancée, and particularly Anne Ramsay, who put the mad in Mad About You, as Caplan’s snidely eccentric boss. But Related at least comes by its Sex and the City- ness honestly, having inherited a staff scribe from that show, Liz Tuccillo, filtering her sensibilities through the more mainstream mindset of former Friends showrunner Marta Kaufman.
“ The show has the camaraderie and sexiness of ( Sex and the City), plus the warmth and the humour of Friends, and the urban neurosis of both,” is how Kaufman put it at the recent critics’ fall preview. She forgot to mention the obvious ( and mostly failed) attempt to ape the machinegun wordplay of Gilmore Girls . . . But it could be worse. It could be Hot Properties. Here we have Gail O’Grady, so fabulous in NYPD Blue and American Dreams, trying to kick it old- school sitcom style as a brainy bombshell New York realtor — who, in a rather awkward sideplot, also happens to be married to a much younger man. MAD TV
and King of Queens’ Nicole Sullivan finds yet another niche she can’t quite squeeze herself into as the sarcastic, single Samantha type ( but, this being network, without the athletic sex life); with Latina pin- up girl Sofia Vergara getting most of the best lines as a “ gaydarimpaired” divorcee. Late cast addition Christina Moore plays a naïve debutante.
This show’s version of a Sex and the City
seal of approval is to cast Evan Handler in a similar support role as a commiserating office neighbour.
“ This seemed the right way to go,” the actor deadpanned. “ You always have to remember it is a show about four ladies . . . and you are never going to be closer than fifth in line for Letterman.” The show may not last long enough for any of them to get there. Again, the end result is a far cry from the stated intent, which is in this case to apply the more sophisticated sensibilities of Sex to the more mainstream style of, say, Designing Women.
“ Obviously, this show is a bit of a melding of those two,” acknowledges creator Suzanne Martin, a veteran of early Frasier. “ In subsequent episodes, I have to say, it doesn’t revolve as much around everybody talking about sex all the time.” But while we are talking about Sex . . . whatever happened to that show’s two ( notably male) creative centres, creator/producer Darren Star and co- producer Michael Patrick King. Though Star has cooked up a very tasty filmed sitcom based on the foodie bestseller Kitchen Confidential, the pilot pulled in only three or four million viewers — barely enough to keep it simmering on the back- burner, especially on cancel- crazy Fox.
King teamed up with ex- Friend Lisa Kudrow on The Comeback, yet another cablecom about a vain and needy actress — though an ideal showcase for Kudrow’s considerable talent, there were never more than a couple of million fans willing to watch her be humiliated every week. And as a result, The Comeback won’t be.