The Sex and the City reboot is here – and it’s finally given us a realistic depiction of female friendship

The Sex and the City ladies are back on our screen – well, most of them anyway. Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis have returned to reprise their iconic characters, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte in And Just Like That… But there’s one noticeable absence: Kim Cattrall’s Samantha.

We’ve known since the reboot was announced that Cattrall wouldn’t be involved – she and Parker have a long-standing feud – but we weren’t sure how her absence would be depicted in the show. With the first two episodes dropping on NOWTV this week, we saw the characters deal with the absence swiftly. The reason? A friendship breakdown.

In one of the first scenes of the new series, Charlotte, Miranda and Carrie are having one of their famous Saturday brunches when their old friend, Bitsy Von Muffling (Julie Halston) passes by and asks where their “fourth musketeer” is, referring to Samantha.

Charlotte say she is “no longer with us” which Miranda quickly corrects, explaining Samantha isn’t dead, rather she has moved to London for work. Later on in the episode, Carrie refers to Samantha again, speaking to Miranda about Samantha’s move and revealing a falling out the pair had over Carrie firing Samantha as her book publisher. It’s later explained that, while all the girls have tried reaching out to Samantha, they’ve had no reply.

In the original series, the core four – Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha – were seen as the epitome of female friendship. They supported one another, were by each other’s side through every break-up, told each other hard truths and Charlotte even lent Carrie $40,000 when she couldn’t afford a deposit for her apartment.

For women watching this in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was the kind of friendships we aspired to have but, when we look back at it now, we realise how unrealistic this depiction was. While some friendships stand the test of time, to have a core friendship group such as we saw on the show is rare.

In reality, some friendships will fade, some will last forever and some will come and go. For single women, when their friends enter a relationship – as the characters on the show so often did – you often find you see them less and less as they hang out with their partner and other couple friends. For women whose friends start to have babies – as both Charlotte and Miranda do – time spent with them becomes few and far between.

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Friendship break-ups, too, are a fact of life. And this is something that wasn’t touched on in the original series. So the fact that we’re seeing it now, seeing the guilt that Carrie feels because of it and seeing her mourn the great friendship she once had, is a reassuring look at how friendships ebb and flow – and a reminder not to always compare your life to something you’ve seen onscreen.

When Sex and the City first aired, it made women who feel comfortable with their sexuality feel seen. We only hope that And Just Like That... can mimic the same sentiment when it comes to how friendships are portrayed in this modern era.

Yours,

Laura Hampson

Deputy lifestyle editor