Diana Wichtel: What isn't problematic about And Just Like That?

Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis in And Just Like That. Photo / Supplied

A Sex and the City reboot? And Just Like That sees the return of a coven of New York women, now even more obscenely wealthy and privileged than they were in the original. This is apparently what we need right now. Maybe it's meant to help that in And Just like That, Covid is mentioned with a sort of fond nostalgia, like that time Charlotte's vagina was depressed. "Remember when we legally had to stand six feet apart?" Lol.

Of course I'm watching, are you mad? Tough times call for mindless distraction and I'm getting bored with the clowns on Fox News. As SATC's inexplicably successful columnist, Carrie Bradshaw, once said, "When I first moved to New York and was totally broke sometimes I would buy a Vogue magazine instead of dinner."

15 years later Carrie looks like she has devoured a stack of Vogues in the interim. The original series, unforgettable, try as you might, for four single ladies having a gruelling discussion about anal sex in the back of a New York cab, did some genuine ground-breaking between Cosmopolitans. When Tony Soprano used the "c" word in primetime he was walking in the ridiculous shoes of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda. Fair dues.

There have been two awful movies. I'm still scarred by Sex and the City 2. The location was meant to be exotic - "Abu Dhabi Doo!" – and it generated appalling one-liners, including Samantha's infamous "Lawrence of my labia".

There was always the fashion. A global pandemic and climate change does not deter Charlotte from buying Oscar de la Renta gowns for her daughters when Lily has a piano recital. Nod to the times: 12-year-old Rose hates the dress, sparking a storyline where she comes out as non-binary and changes her name to Rock. The ensemble worn by Carrie for the funeral – sorry, spoiler alert – of the love of her life, Big, includes a crime against millinery that looked like my Nana's teapot mat stuck to the side of her head.

Sex and the City always was a comic book account of the zeitgeist. The new series is determined to make up for the lack of diversity of the old. The writers have Carrie and co act as though they have been marooned on Mars during their long hiatus. They suddenly decide they need more people of colour – any people of colour – as friends, like it's this year's fashion accessory. It doesn't help that, despite living for decades in one of the most culturally eclectic cities on the planet, Carrie has never heard of Diwali.

Miranda. Dear oh dear. She goes back to college to order a side of social justice. Her gruesome attempts to ingratiate herself to her professor – "I signed up to your class because you were black!" – see her firing out microaggressions like a jammed tennis ball launcher. What with her drinking problem and her affair with Carrie's non-binary podcast co-host, Miranda does much heavy lifting when it comes to scenes that have you shouting, "Who the $#@! wrote this?" at the screen.

Kim Cattrall's Samantha is gone, apart from the odd text. And Chris Noth's Mr Big is written out via a heart attack. Carrie finds him dying and inexplicably fails to call 911 or perform CPR. Adding to the tragedy, her shoes get wrecked.

The season also demonstrates the hazards of product placement. Pains are taken to show it wasn't the Peloton bike Big was exercising on. "It wasn't the bike, Steve," Miranda tells her husband. This series also has Carrie peeing into a Diet Peach Snapple bottle. No doubt sales will go up.

The times as farce: Miranda white-saviours her professor by hitting a would-be subway purse-snatcher dressed as Chucky with a human rights textbook. If you want to see what can happen when Karens go woke, tune in.

What is problematic, someone wonders. Answer: just about everything about this show. There are some nods to our hyper-judgmental times: "Stop noticing things!" someone pleads. And "It's better to be confused than sure." Full marks, then to And Just Like That for being the most confused thing currently streaming. It takes commitment to get this much wrong. But maybe that's what makes it a genuine sign of the times.

Next week: Steve Braunias