Excited about revival of TV show

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This article was published 15/11/2021 (1588 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has been announced the Sex and the City 10-episode revival show And Just Like That will debut on HBO Max Dec. 9 with its first two episodes, followed by releases every Thursday night.

I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am. Somewhere inside of me is a wistful 20-something 1990s gal who identifies with each character on this show and is naive enough to believe in the lifestyle it sold me. A weekly sex columnist in New York City who galavants around Manhattan with her best friends, while wearing designer clothes (and shoes) and who lives in a giant brownstone with a walk-in closet…

It’s not that I thought I would get there in my life — to have the lifestyle that Carrie Bradshaw had — but the show sure gave me a lot of wonderful scenery to use in my daydreams. To be completely honest, I never imagined that I’d ever see New York in real life. When I did in 2019, I nearly cried when I walked up from the subway station and was immediately swallowed up by the biggest buildings I’d seen in my whole life. Love at first sight.

Since they announced this reboot last January, I have been watching social media like a hawk, savouring every single glimpse of the fictional characters Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker and her besties, Miranda Hobbes (played by Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt (played by Kristin Davis.) Bless the age of social media where people can stumble upon a movie set in the middle of a New York street one afternoon and film a little clip to post on Tik Tok or Twitter.

These characters, along with Samantha — played by Kim Cattrall, who will not appear in the reboot — have periodically shown up in aspects of my life and conversations since I first “met them” ( and I use that term loosely, because when I say “met” I really mean when I first started watching them on my parents’ old TV in the basement) in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

The show and the characters portrayed a life and friendships that seemed perfect, even when they faced challenges. The girls, though all so seemingly different, maintained a sisterhood and loyalty to one another. Most notably though the show introduced us to a fifth main character in New York City, which may have been the most beautiful and glamorous of all the characters on the show.

Of all the things that didn’t age well in that show, and there are plenty of problematic things that didn’t age well in that show, the beautiful city of lights isn’t one of them. It still shines flawlessly and serves as a sort of dream world. In 2009, when the first Sex and the City movie came out, Chris Heywood of NYC & Company told ABC News “There could be no better advertising campaign for New York City.”

It’s true. People still go to New York and are able to try to hunt for old ghosts of the show. Whether it’s visiting Carrie’s iconic apartment stoop, located at 66 Perry St., or having a drink at Aiden’s bar, Scout — which is actually a pub called Onieals Grand Street Bar on Mulberry Street.

In 2019 on a trip to New York for my 40th birthday. My partner Chris bought us tickets to ride along on one of those Sex and the City site-seeing tour buses. It was wild, not just because it was neat, but because it was such a stereotypically touristy thing to do. We piled onto this big comfy bus with other tourists, eager to see some of the locations where the show filmed. For a few hours we drove around Manhattan, watching short clips of the show on a screen at the front of the bus while a tour operator pointed out the locations that were in those clips and shared some gossip that she’d heard along the way from the ol’ Sex and the City rumour mill. Apparently, if you go to New York and you happen to run into Chris Noth, who plays Carrie’s love interest Mr. Big on the show, he’s a lovely fella who will usually pose for a selfie.

As Sarah Jessica Parker says in the trailer…

And just like that, a new chapter begins.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyAcook