Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That is back for another season. But has it outstayed its welcome?

West Australian

24-05-2025

Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That... is back for another season. But has it outstayed its welcome?
That's what critics and viewers alike will be asking when the third series premieres on Friday.
It's just one of a long list of TV series reboots that have made their way to screens in recent years as producers ride the reboot renaissance. Some have been successful — the recent restyling of 80s soap Dynasty, British favourite Doctor Who and the stil schmaltzy but well received reincarnation of 90s favourite Full House — others, not so.
In fact, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find recent TV reboots that have survived more than a few seasons.
Case in point: Will and Grace, the popular '90s sitcom brought back for a three-season run in 2017. After starting out strong, the series fell out of favour with both critics and fans, who deserted the show in droves, complaining the reboot it had tainted their memory of the much-treasured original series.
Can And Just Like That… buck the trend and go the distance? On the eve of its season three debut, that remains to be seen. But one thing's for sure: audiences are divided.
When the reboot first hit screens in late 2021, its first season was met with mixed reviews. Some loved revisiting Carrie and her friends, now navigating life in New York in their 50s, others hated what the once era-defining women had become.
Season two divided critics and fans even further, with many claiming the show, once so ground-breaking and subversive in its original '90s iteration, had become something of a caricature of itself: that its central characters — writer-turned-grieving-widow Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) lawyer-turned-divorcee Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and gallery curator-turned-Park-Avenue-yummy mummy Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) — had strayed so far from their roots that they were nothing more than privileged ciphers of themselves.
In a review for the BBC, critic Caryn James noted that while the series attempted to recapture the charm of Sex and the City, it often fell short. She called the spinoff an 'annoying and dull nostalgia-fest offset by clumsy dollops of self-awareness about living in the 2020s.'
The Guardian's Lucy Mangan was even more scathing, claiming the reboot was nothing more than a 'regressive, embarrassing disappointment' — Mangan even went so far as to say that it had ruined the experience of watching the original Sex and the City for her.
Many may be inclined to agree. But curiosity may yet get the better of them. (The network has gagged reviews of the new season until Thursday morning.)
'The appeal of And Just Like That... is primarily nostalgic: it offers fans of Sex and the City an opportunity to have just a little bit more of the characters they love,' says Associate Professor Lauren Rosewarne, pop culture expert at the University of Melbourne.
'It probably isn't going to satisfy to the same extent as the original show did, but it provides audiences an opportunity to revisit people they hold dear.
'I would be very surprised if And Just Like That... has an audience separate from fans of the original show.'
There's a very real risk the series — as Mangan suggests — will besmirch the good name of its source material.
But all that those concerns were pushed to the side as the show's cast and creators, including original show-runner and AJLT creator Michael Patrick King, gathered in New York to celebrate the next instalment, which picks up a few months on from Carrie's move into her deluxe new Gramercy Park home.
Kim Cattrall, who notably popped up for a much-talked-about cameo as original character Samantha in season two's finale, was nowhere to be seen. Instead joining the core three characters — and elevated to series regulars — were Nicole Ari Parker, who plays Lisa Todd Wexley, and Sarita Choudhury, whose character Seema Patel does a passable job of mirroring Cattrall's Samantha.
These two women, along with Karen Pittman who played Dr Nya Wallace and Sara Ramirez, who played the divisive non-binary comic Miranda falls for in season one, were introduced to the show to address the glaring 'whiteness' and 'herteronativity' of the original series. Ramirez and Pittman's characters were written off the show this season — Ramirez presumably because no one liked their character, Pittman at her request and due to scheduling conflicts.
The other two remain, serving as welcome foils for our central three, who in this season are continuing to navigate life in their 50s in New York City.
Carrie is still in a relationship with Aidan (John Corbett), but he's requested a period of 'no-contact' as he goes back to Virginia to be closer to his troubled son Wyatt. Meanwhile, Charlotte is still juggling the demands of her career alongside being mum to two teen kids — Miranda, newly divorced from Steve (David Eigenberg), is dating up a storm having moved on from her fraught relationship with Che Diaz.
Fans will surely enjoy spending more time with their old friends once more, but whether they'll be satisfied enough to stick around still remains to be seen.
There's every chance viewers may now consider the series a 'hate-watch', in the vein of shows like Emily in Paris, or the pulpy-but-watchable Netflix series You — they may dip in purely because of the show's remembered past.
But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
'Most television is about escapism,' Rosewarne points out.
'Most American television is about people richer than us and more beautiful than us — I'm not sure And Just Like That... is a better or worse offender in this regard.'
And Just Like That season three premieres Friday May 30 on Max