SATC without Samantha? It’s like The Beatles with no Ringo
And Just Like That... Sky Comedy, Thursday ★★★☆☆
And Just Like That…, after 17 years, they’re back. Partly. Carrie is back and Miranda is back and Charlotte is back but Samantha is not, as Kim Cattrall would rather be dead had other commitments. She probably did well to steer clear, for whatever reason.
This is an awkward reboot of Sex And The City. At certain moments, I had every cheek you can think of clenched in utter embarrassment.
(Stop it, stop it now. Run. We’ll pretend it never happened!)
But there is a devastating event at the end of episode one that does bring some much required emotional heft. That upped my rating to three stars. It pulls the rug from under you, entirely, so I have to give it credit for that.
This opens with the three arriving at a cool restaurant for brunch, because of course it does. Did brunch even exist before Sex And The City? The fashion is terrific but substantially more muted. At no point does Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) turn up in a tutu or wearing a corsage the size of a dinner plate, which is a pity.
The show wants you to notice that they’ve noticed that they are in their mid-50s now. ‘I’m 55,’ announces Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). ‘I’m 55,’ Charlotte (Kristin Davis) will later say. I don’t know what they expected us to expect. That they’d be crocked? That they’d be shuffling around in Manolo Crocs while saying: ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Anyone want something while I’m up?’ It keeps pointing out things about itself, is what I’m saying.
The questions we all want answered are addressed in the first few minutes (so I don’t consider them spoilers). Is Carrie still with Big? Yes. Is Miranda still with Steve? Yes. Is Miranda now having to pick up used condoms from Brady’s bedroom floor? Ugh, yes. Is Charlotte still with Harry?
Yes. Are the puns as bad? Surprisingly, this is bad pun lite. Do we still have Carrie’s ‘What I began to wonder…’ voiceover? Not really.
Meanwhile, they explain Samantha’s absence thus: she’s working in London and has ghosted Carrie and the others ever since Carrie decided she didn’t want a book publicist any more. This is one way to deal with the absence of Cattrall, who would rather be dead, but it does seem most unlikely that Samantha would act like that. They have to say something, I suppose.
The original series, which ran from 1998 to 2004, was important not because it was feminist – it wasn’t; they were all fixated on riding off into the sunset with a Mr Right – but because it sold the male characters deliciously short (unheard of) and was direct about desire and sex from a woman’s point of view (also unheard of).
I remember once turning it on when my mother was visiting – it was the episode when Samantha found a grey hair down there and brought out the dye; it was that episode – and quickly turning over to Bergerac. John Nettles, always a safe port.
In the meantime there have been two unwatchable movies. (Actually, the first wasn’t that bad. The second I have blanked. Was there a camel in it?)
I have also blanked that Russian artist Carrie was dating during one series, as he was irritating off the scale. It was, it now occurs to me, a show you could love while pretty much hating everyone in it.
But back to the reboot. Miranda is now doing a masters in human rights, Carrie has a podcast, because everyone has to do that– ‘it’s like jury service’, she says; there are still some good lines – and Charlotte has two daughters who, 17 years later, manage to be about 12.
For most of the first episode – there will be ten and I watched two – they were all still so girly, which is what made my cheeks clench. ‘You can’t just sit there and giggle,’ Carrie’s podcast co-host tells her, and I felt much the same. When Miranda first meets her professor, she makes a mistake and becomes such a ball of neurotic confusion I wanted to shout: grow up! Big and Carrie, meanwhile, act like newlyweds even though we all know that, 17 years on, it’s about who takes the rubbish out. Their relationship does not seem to have matured. It is explicit in places but that always felt like a nod to the original series rather than something that would be there organically.
There are now non-white substantial characters, which was necessary, but its references to how the world has changed also didn’t feel organic. They came across as educative moments. But most damningly, the chemistry between the three often felt forced.
However, the tonal swerve I referred to above does change everything. You’ll sit up then, right enough, and will probably want to watch episode two, although after that, possibly not.
Meanwhile, if you’re in it for the affluent lifestyle, you won’t be disappointed. Carrie has two apartments in Manhattan and a beach house! She has a mahoosive walk-in wardrobe with racks and racks of shoes! (‘Hello, my lovers,’ she says to them.)
But, like The Beatles without Ringo, say, it misses something without Cattrall. Shame she would rather be dead was too busy elsewhere.