Sexless and the city: Ageism and other real problems

The main thing about Sex and the City when it originally burst upon us was that it had lots of sex. Four female friends bonded over getting it, not getting any, how to get it, how many times, etc. The new avatar of the same show back after almost two decades, And Just Like That, has gone celibate on us. Not only does actor Kim Cattrall, who had been playing maneater Samantha and gamely mouthing impossible lines like ‘Lawrence of my labia’, vanish, but Mr Big dies - no, not in the throes of pleasure - while exercising! Libido is a no-no, it would seem.

Of course, the serial was never soft porn. It was a mildly feminist version of little girl in big city at a time when hetero sex itself needed to be rescued from its corset of prudery. But it made the whole man-woman thing… fun. About banter, about the suspense of will he call or not, about dressing up for yourself, and an urban sisterhood. Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, of the thin waist and thick hair wrote about dating men for a living. Viewers were turned on not only by the central premise of finding love and lust, but by the dresses, the shoes, the hair styles, the carefree dialogues, the narrow escapes from boredom and bad bedrooms.

As three out of the four actors who played the central roles come back, there is as much curiosity about their chemistry as about their crow’s feet. In their mid-fifties, none of them can affect a false girlishness. But this is a series that ran on feminine adrenalin, high on youth and wine. Parties, foreign holidays, weddings… Even when glum on screen, they were glam.