In our house, any new Carrie Bradshaw in our lives is a cause for excitement. And so, as And Just Like That returns for a second season tonight in the UK we were eager to see what the reviewers made of the show.
Well, the reviews are in and while many were happy to see the return of Carrie Bradshaw, Charlotte York and Miranda Hobbes – with several people in the US and here waiting up to access the episodes as soon as they aired – the reviews are in, and we’ll be honest, they’re not everything we'd hoped for...
In fact, The Independent went so far as to call it ‘A toothless imitation of Sex and the City’ whilst Collider wrote, ‘So much time is devoted to tiny plotlines with no weight and even less payoff.’
But what reviewers seem to forget is that the whole appeal of SATC wasn’t the incredible storylines, it was that between the four women and their New York shenanigans, we could get answers to our own questions about friendships, life, relationships. Yes, they weren’t always the answers that we wanted or expected, but it was nice to know that Carrie messed up just as much as us.
Luckily, the more positive reviews of AJLT definitely tap into that aspect.
Despite giving the second series only three stars, Radio Times acknowledged the pros of the episodes.
They wrote, ‘As well as a return to more comedic territory, sex is also back on the menu (we're not talking SATC levels, but it's a marked change)… That switch-up taps into one of the reasons people found the original series so entertaining. Its exploration of female friendships grounded the show, but the sometimes wonderful, often weird and downright nasty nature of dating and sex was what kept viewers on their toes.’
Look, life is messy, jokes fall flat and sex isn’t always passionate and steamy – and we learnt that through Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda (and Samantha ssh!). Now, as the cast and their viewers get older with each other it’s nice to watch a show where people still haven’t figured out what’s going on.
No matter what happens, we'll be nostalgic and ready to raise our cosmos soon as we're home tonight. Bring on series three we say!