And Just Like That...
Sky Comedy | ★✩✩✩✩

Channelling my inner Carrie Bradshaw: “If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, what do you call doing a different thing and expecting the same result?” And Just Like That…they’ve taken a comedy that was a massive critical and commercial hit, turned it into a not-comedy, and were still expecting it to be a massive critical and commercial hit? Amongst the torrent of remakes and reboots, it’s certainly a brave choice. Imagine the makers of Star Trek going, “You know what, enough of that outer space malarky, let’s set the new series in suburbia. We’ll call it Commute Trek.”
And so Sex and the City has morphed into Death and the City. There’s no way of continuing this review without a massive spoiler, so look away now, now look back, Mr. Big dies. This emotive moment is at the end of the first episode, but the 45 minutes lead-up is the most cringeworthy experience since, well, Sex and the City 2. My wife and I were curled up into immobile balls on the sofa, muscles seized and involuntarily constricted, slack-jawed as we couldn’t tear our eyes away from the travesty taking place on the screen.
A lot has happened in the nearly 20 years since we’d excitedly devoured the original, but do jokes no longer exist? Sex and the City may have dated (see what I did there?), but it was pithy, and innovative, and if not ahead of its time, it certainly somewhat defined it. This first episode is so leaden it makes me question whether the original had any value whatsoever. Worse, being in your 20s, watching these characters in their 30s, part of their journey as they grappled with love and careers, was aspirational, it gave the future hope. Being in your 40s, and watching these characters in their 50s, is more depressing than the thought of another lockdown.
In place of struggle there’s smugness; their only real problem, apart from being palmed off with a cheaper cut of salmon, is the characters’ and the show’s desperation to fit in with the younger generation. With Kim Cattrall’s very wise decision to not return, Samantha has been replaced by giving each of the three remaining leads their very own woman of colour friend. Human beings having scorned the written word in the dystopia of 2021, Carrie ‘has’ to ‘work’ on a podcast. The seemingly most high-budget podcast in existence, with a woke ironic ‘woke moment’ ident that signals the moment where post-modernism finally ate itself.
There’s much chat about everyone’s favourite Jewish convert Charlotte dying her hair to try and pass for younger, but no mention of the copious amount of filler injections that make it seem like you’re watching a sketch from Spitting Image.
Then Mr. Big croaks, and it’s finally the moment where Sex and the City is put out of its misery, and things get a bit more interesting. The second episode, about Big’s funeral, and how people respond to death, is the show blipping back to life as, whether you have a walk-in closet for your shoes or not, we all have to confront mortality. I wouldn’t mind an entire series devoted to the funerals of beloved TV characters, one episode, Debra from Beverly Hills 90210, another, Norm from Cheers. The thought though of the programme makers sustaining Carrie’s grief and, I imagine, eventual healing for another eight episodes fills me with dread. And Just Like That… is a zombie show, more undead than alive, a shadow of its former self, and it wants to eat your brains.