It’s been the most divisive comeback on TV. But, as viewers keep tuning in to And Just Like That…, is it time to accept that Carrie and co are defying their critics, asks Paul Flynn
When they sat down to start thinking about how to reconfigure the friendships of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, the primary writers of And Just Like That… had a moment of realisation. Writing these friendships was a quick and easy way to expedite difficult conversations between themselves. ‘It’s a superhighway to intimacy between each other,’ writer Julie Rottenberg told them all. If they kept it that way, they could keep the heart of Sex And The City alive, the serious stuff beneath the fluff for these four revolutionary women. They could be the same, but different. The writers’ room steadied on its axis, preparing once more for battle.
As it glides past its seventh episode, is it time to admit that… and just like that, we’re all talking about our favourite foursome once more? Haven’t Thursdays got that little bit more interesting? Isn’t January itself looking a little less bleak as you wait for a seven-day catch-up on what’s happening between Miranda and Che after their hot non-binary passions shared over a kitchen cabinet? How Charlotte’s beloved teen Rose/Rock will look with short hair? And perhaps the most startling realisation of them all: that the primary love of Carrie’s life was not a man. It wasn’t even her wardrobe. It was, in fact, her apartment?
We all know that AJLT got off to, ahem, a shaky start. The knife blows came quick and sharp. Dumping Samantha off to London was the ultimate insult. Samantha invented the Meatpacking district. She could not be less Chiswick. Miranda losing all her previous steely confidence in a university classroom? As if! A new list of supporting characters introduced clunkily to atone for the sins of SATC’s glaring diversity issues past. And then, Carrie prepping dinner for a naff husband singing along to his Todd Rundgren vinyls with food she had bought and cooked herself? Wherefore art thou brunch? Who were these women?
Reviewers lost their shit. WhatsApp huddles went ballistic. Twitter exploded. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha are the Beatles of TV, with better footwear and quippier comebacks. They changed the way we saw ourselves reflected on TV (I include us as gays here, because they did that, too). They opened up conversations. They expedited intimacies.
In episode one, Carrie is gifted a great line. ‘I’m off to record my podcast, it’s a bit like doing jury duty now.’ Inevitably, there is an accompanying podcast to go with AJLT, The Writers’ Room, where some, but not all, of the criticisms are addressed. Some ring true, like showrunner Michael Patrick King’s explanation that Stanford Blatch’s very sharp exit to Japan was supposed to be a full cocktails and cigarettes exchange with Carrie, but actor Willie Garson (RIP) was too ill to film it, hence the sharp, speedy exeunt. Other’s less so, like a lame excuse for Miranda’s inability to navigate the culture wars when it comes to talking to a Black professor about her hair (apparently, it’s her ‘being allowed to make mistakes’).
And yet, have the writers been playing the long game? Episode by episode, the jigsaw started to colour in a wider picture about what being in their fifties actually feels like for Carrie and co, an age when possibilities turn to inevitabilities and sage, sometimes sad wisdom clouds over the fleeting giddiness and jollity of trends.
The first big, bold production masterstroke was killing off Big, ridding the cast of its alleged IRL resident sex pest (actor Chris Noth denies all the claims), squashing two massive problems with one small Peloton. Carrie single always made more sense than Carrie coupled. ‘Sex’ had been written out of the title, already. Not because sex disappears in your fifties, but because it doesn’t carry quite so much weight as it did when it was still mysterious and there were new things to try. Also: if AJLT had been all Miranda-on-the-kitchen-cabinet moments, wouldn’t it have looked a bit… Madonna?
Big’s funeral episode was genuinely brilliant: gripping, funny, emo, women-centric and smart – with the wise-cracking returning character Susan Sharon reminding Carrie from the back pews, ‘Am I the only one who remembers what a prick he was to her?’ And admit it, the Samantha flowers made you cry.
Because it was Big, not Samantha, who was the surprise kill-off. There have been inevitable rumours that Kim Cattrall may yet return to the show, a possibility lingering over the promise of an as-yet-unconfirmed but heavily hinted at second season. ‘We all miss her and hope she comes back for a second season,’ a close source told The Daily Mail. ‘The door will never close on her,’ they added.
Ultimately, over the past six weeks, we have learned what Michael Patrick King believed all along. ‘They’re still here.’ At the commissioning stage he told his paymasters that he wanted AJLT to feel like bumping into Carrie on the street, 15 years later and answering the question: what’s she like now?
And she is the same. They all are. Even Samantha’s text messages are recognisably her, vulva references and all. They just got older. The world slid beneath their feet. Everything changed. And they are changing, often clunkily along with it.
This is the brilliant truth of AJLT. In your fifties, there might be a temptation to feel a bit past it. The fabulous liberation of that is realising you just don’t care. The central cast are weird, alcoholic, confused, out of touch and totally, believably brilliant. These women are once more conduits to us talking about difficult stuff in public, together. They have turned from 20th century consumer radicals into 21st century circumspect heroes. Flaws and all, I could not love them more.
‘And Just Like That…’ is on Thursdays on Sky Comedy and available to stream on Now TV