It’s safe to say the first season of Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That… was not the triumphant return fans had been waiting for.
Expected, maybe: the second Sex and the City movie was a car crash into a train wreck that all but torched whatever goodwill remained for Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her crew. So much so that Kim Cattrall (AKA Samantha, the breakout character of the original series) cut ties and refused to return for the spin-off. Which for a while seemed like the smart play.
Aside from the attention-grabbing hook of bumping off Chris North’s Big as soon as possible – thus freeing Carrie to dive back into the dating pool, though her grief was a lengthy subplot – the first season struggled to get out of first gear.
But then a shock twist: despite a few bumps, the second season started to find its groove. It even found a way to get Samantha back for a cameo appearance (by having her film it by herself on another continent).
So the big question here, preferably asked in voiceover while typing up your latest column after a night out with the girls, is ‘can Season 3 keep it up?’ There’s a few ifs and buts – this is a reboot of a 30-year-old show, after all – but for the most part the answer is yes. It’s not what it was, but what it is still has a lot of the old charm.
Watch the And Just Like That... Season 3 trailer.
After the slightly desperate return of former love interest Aidan (John Corbett) last season, followed by an ‘uh, gotta go’ conclusion that saw him leave town for family reasons possibly never to return, it’s a relief that after half an episode’s worth of ‘we’re still together, we’re just not communicating’ Corbett actually shows up in the flesh.
Aidan’s relationship with Carrie is still long distance – cue attempts at phone sex – but at least when and if they do break up we know it’ll be face to face.
Carrie also has a massive new house, which to start with is mostly empty and clearly ready to become various kinds of metaphors for whatever stage of life she finds herself in. It also provides plenty of roaming room for Shoe the cat, the stunning character find of 2025.
None of her friends seem all that convinced that this new status quo is going to work, but at least it leaves Carrie with plenty of time to run around wearing insane outfits (there is a hat in the first episode that deserves its own spin-off), meet old friends and new people, and just generally feel like Carrie used to – someone exploring the big city.
And Just Like That…: ready to mingle
Also back in a slightly more familiar groove is the currently-single and ready to mingle Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), who in the first few episodes gets to explore both a one-night stand with a tourist hitting all the traps (Rosie O’Donnell) and the dubious pleasures of trash television. They’re not exactly subplots with much depth, but again, they do a solid job of rekindling the old Miranda.
As for Charlotte (Kristin Davis), things are even more light and fluffy in her world. Husband Harry (Evan Handler) is an entertaining goofball, while fellow parent and documentary maker Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) – who is having her own trouble with pushy producers – is always ready to partner up for some scheme or another. Her first storyline might involve a case of mistaken identity involving her dog, but Davis’s wide-eyed outrage is always comedy gold.
With former castmates Dr Nya and Che now gone, real estate agent and Samantha stand-in Seema (Sarita Choudhury) gets a bigger slice of the pie, starting with the whirlwind return of her film auteur lover – not that his comeback will stop her providing some extremely well-aimed skewering of the duds found in the older end of the dating pool.
If the first two seasons flailed around trying to recapture the original’s sometimes spikey spark, this seems to have settled down and realised that what the fans wanted back was the characters they love. It’s not quite in a happily ever after rut – Carrie gets attacked by a wave of rats in the second episode – but the early episodes reveal a show largely content to just play the hits.
After all, nothing ever goes wrong with long-distance relationships, right?
