And Just Like That … reacquaints us with three members of that famous quartet — Cattrall opted out of this ten-episode HBO Max series, so Samantha is only present via references to the fact that she’s currently living in London — as they navigate life in their mid-50s, which apparently involves a lot of confusion about the modern world and only a little talk about s-e-x.
As the first episode begins, Charlotte is still happily married to Harry , married, deeply in love and ensconced in their mammoth Manhattan apartment, where they drink wine and groove to Todd Rundgren.
The only sex we actually witness in the first four episodes provided to critics involves Brady doing it with his girlfriend, which is something I don’t think anyone needed or wanted to see.
And if you’re Carrie, it is a time when writing a newspaper column has been replaced by co-hosting a podcast called X, Y and Me, in which Carrie acts as a representative of cisgender, hetero women but gets super-uncomfortable when the conversation gets graphic.
And yet, as in any piece of revisited IP, And Just Like That … will trigger many familiar pleasure centers for an audience that remembers when people used to gather on Sunday nights to watch the original show .
We slowly begin to learn about the interior life of Miranda’s professor, Nya, and Charlotte becomes close with a Black mother at her daughters’ hoity-toity private school, making a clumsy and offensive attempt to cement their friendship in episode four.
There are occasional flashes of the insight and humor that helped make Sex and the City such a phenomenon in its day — a wry comment from Miranda here, Carrie embarrassing herself in amusing fashion there.