Let me prefix this with one piece of information: I love Sex and the City. Always have, always will. I’ve binged and rewatched every episode of the six season series countless times, to the point where I could probably give you a SparkNotes of each episode. 

I can recount many examples (not that anyone would want to hear them) of why Samantha is often my favourite character. I can tell you that the paint in Miranda’s pre-war apartment on the Upper West Side is by Ralph Lauren. I can give you a precise timeline of when Carrie’s wardrobe – in my opinion – reached peak brilliance (season four, episode 13), or a visual history of every ingenious get-up Carrie wears during the show’s two part finale in Paris. 

In lockdown, when Caroline O’Donoghue and Dolly Alderton did a dedicated podcast Sentimental in the City, I clung to every word – and rewatched my old favourites all over again. They still had the same sheen. 

I promise you, in spite of every red flag the last few months have offered – the glitzy promos, the social media circus, the unveiling of a slew of new characters – that I wanted this to work.

Watching the first episode of And Just Like That was like rekindling a doomed relationship with an old flame. In your head you’d convinced yourself that – against all the odds – it would work out, in reality it’s awkward as hell. 

The episode opens with Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte meeting for brunch. What ensues is a quickfire catch up of the last 20 years. Carrie is now a podcaster, Miranda is going back to college to study human rights and Charlotte is – err – still Charlotte, just with two growing daughters, one of whom rallies against her Park Avenue ideas of femininity.

Although acutely aware of its woke failings in the original series, the writers didn’t seem to take any heed of criticism of how self-obsessed the character of Carrie is, who trills more than once over brunch that Miranda “still hasn’t listened to her podcast”. 

As for Samantha, the party line is that she has moved to London and cut out the friendship group entirely, seemingly because Carrie dropped her as her publicist. A tough pill for fans – who note this as completely at odds with Cattrall’s character – to swallow. 

Back home, in a show of stilted domestic bliss, Carrie and Big’s kitchen conversation while making dinner reads like a hokey husband and wife out of a 1950s sitcom. Each line is self-consciously delivered like it’s going to be turned into a meme about handbags. 

The show continues in a surreal vein when Carrie steps into her walk-in wardrobe. A moment where the music swells and the light becomes a KiraKira filter. 

I’m going to say it once and for all: enough with the wardrobe. Enough with the shoes. We all love them, it’s why we fell for the show, but we don’t actually need to be reminded of that with a gratuitous zoom-in on Manolos at every given opportunity. 

Have we forgotten that one of the great things about the original show was that it was less than perfect? Sometimes the outfits were dodgy, the lighting was often unflattering, the apartments were less than Architectural Digest material; the characters cursed, smoked, and often did questionable, inappropriate things. 

When it comes to the latter, the route And Just Like That decided to take was to make three intelligent, educated women in their 50s look tone deaf. This was brought to its peak when Miranda has a cringe-inducing encounter with her new Black lecturer Dr Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman). I don’t remember Miranda being silly – in fact, I remember her being pithy, informed and conscientious. However, the reboot must have needed a fall-guy. 

Equally, bringing Carrie into 2021 – the world of relationship apps, pandemic dating and nuanced sexuality offered so many golden opportunities. However, when Carrie is asked a direct question about masturbation on her podcast, she giggles like a schoolgirl. Did they forget this is the woman who once wrote about sexual kinks like they were days of the week? Just because Carrie once had a sex column doesn’t mean she needs to overshare every detail of her personal life but, again, it seems like a missed opportunity. The storyline seems to hint at that when Carrie’s boss Che Diaz (played by Sara Ramirez) reminds her that she was the “OG” relationship guru. 

Make no mistake, the original had its problems. (The most obvious being that it focused only on white affluent characters.) But in this case the writers should be aware that the pitfalls of tokenism are just as damaging as underrepresentation. 

Fans deserved a smart and authentic revisiting; something that spoke to the sharply-written, considered, often hilarious series we fell in love with. What they were left with was far from that. Where Sex and the City forged its own path in relevancy, this seems the opposite – hopelessly clambering to keep up. 

On a more positive note, there are ten episodes in total. In spite of it all, these first-hurdle stumbles could be smoothed out and the real DNA of the show could still shine through. There are good characters and ample storylines (the shocking news of Big’s sudden death being one) to work with. Sarah Jessica Parker is possibly TV’s most affable star. We’ve committed, we’re in it and – by god – do we want this to work out.

Let’s keep the faith.