And Just Like That review: Sex and the City reboot is like a worn pair of designer boots
And Just Like That follows Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) as they navigate the complicated reality of life and friendship in their 50s.
Every female journalist of a certain vintage has a love-hate relationship with Carrie Bradshaw.
Love, because wouldn’t we all love to be tapping away on our laptop in New York city, filing two hundred words a month about our love life? Hate, because Carrie was a liar. Yes, we might find our faces on the side of a bus, but not wearing Louboutins and living in a one-bedroom apartment with an oven we never used except for as a clothing storage unit.
Aside from the lies, I loved Sex and the City. I drank in the riding and the clothes and the cocktails and the ability to hold down seemingly well-paid jobs while doing not very much at all.
Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte were caricatures of modern women and we loved it. We cheered through their love and loss and when the series ended, we were bereft. Two not-very-good films did not fill the void, but I hung my hopes on the first two episodes of the Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That, airing on Sky.
It’s everything we could have hoped for. The women are older, more emotionally in tune and just as well-dressed.
Consider episode one to be a really long, occasionally arduous recap and stick with it. The cliff notes are: Carrie is now a podcaster, Miranda has left Big Law to study a masters in how-not-to-be-part-of-the-problem, Charlotte is, as Charlotte is. Glossy, self-absorbed and lovely. But no Samantha. The big gaping S-shaped hole is explained by a move to London following a row with Carrie over being her publicist. Not believable, but decent enough.
There’s sex, of course. Carrie and Big are getting it on, just like old people do (with lube) and Miranda’s son Brady is going for it with his girlfriend. He is a fully grown, weed-smoking adult now.
And then Big dies from a heart attack on his Pelaton exercise bike.
Miranda and Steve get the call while discussing how loud their son and his girlfriend are in the bedroom next door. She rushes to Carrie and tenderness abounds. They take to the bed together as they have over the decades - mostly when Big has left Carrie. And this time, he has left her for good.
The women are older and more haggard, but glorious.
Miranda is still bossy and maternal, rooting around Carrie’s (still empty) freezer for coffee and learning how to be an anti-racist with a White Saviour Complex.
Charlotte gets busy sucking all the emotional air out of the room, making Big’s death all about her, and allowing Carrie to deliver the first of several lines harking back to the original series. While walking out of a funeral home that is about “old people and death” she announces to the mortician “Jane, it’s not you, it’s me.”
At Big's impossibly classy funeral, we meet old friend Stanford Blatch, played by Willie Garson who sadly passed away in September with his husband Anthony who reminds him that this is "a funeral, not The Moth."
We have an amazing moment from Susan Sharon (Molly Price), who quips in the middle of the memorial: “Am I the only one who remembers what a prick he was to her?”
There's even a nod to Samantha and a seemingly broken friendship, when a delivery of sprawling flowers for Big's casket arrives with a note saying "Love, Samantha".
Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie shows us once again that she is at her most relatable when going through a crisis. As she navigates the funeral like a champagne bottle of grief about to pop, Stanford remarks, "I really admire her. Pulling it together and giving us a look today, because people will expect it. She’s kind of our Jackie Onassis."
I cried, I laughed and I was impressed by the lack of botox.
Watching And Just Like That is like putting on a pair of vintage designer leather boots. Softened with age, we forgive any imperfections because even slightly mottled, they are still as fabulous as ever.
- Just Like That is available on Sky Comedy and Now TV
