Sex and the City, DVD

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

Some people consider being well-read a moral category. Well, I know some very well-read people and they are venal, deceitful, low and as self-serving as a common thief.

But saying you are well-read sounds smarter than saying you are well-viewed.

I consider myself well-viewed, but despite spending hours in front of the small screen with about 30 channels and a remote I have managed to miss some of those programmes that preoccupy television writers and people around the office water cooler.

I've missed all of 24 and Malcolm in the Middle, never watched an EastEnders, and treat Big Brother , Idol shows and anything that puts sports people and television faces on a Fijian island with the contempt I reserve for a film starring Goldie Hawn.

But well-viewed as I am, I have missed great shows such as The Sopranos. However, the DVD collections are more rewarding. I've only caught episodes in this series by accident because I prefer to wait for the DVD set - it's the best way to watch that extraordinary series: deep immersion with one episode flowing seamlessly into the next.

You can say the same about The Office, Alan Partridge, and The League of Gentlemen. But some series on DVD re-run just don't cut it, especially sitcoms. (Noble exceptions are Cheers and Taxi.)

Because I missed Sex and the City, other than the occasional soundbite, the release of the first five seasons has been time to do the homework. But most of it doesn't stack up or reward close attention. It's a frothy confection best enjoyed with a week's grace between episodes.

On DVD replay the formulaic nature becomes predictable and grating: "Meanwhile across town ... " "So I wondered ... " (cue computer screen and The Question) and "Then I realised ... " Add in those faux vox-pop bits (which disappeared after a while) and the series looks like it has been conceived in a test tube. It also comes with the most irritating theme music since Disney's It's a Small World.

Neurotic self-obsession palls after a while, and three of these gals did that better, and with more monotonous regularity, than most.

Samantha as sexual predator may get the best clothes and snappiest lines (just one-liners actually) but over the long haul she is vacuous and one-dimensional. Little wonder Kim Cattrall didn't put her hand up for the movie.

The metaphors and thematic ideas - none lasting more than an episode but even then fraying visibly - are also strained. Sexual politics when Carrie has a relationship with a politician? Spare us.

So what's good? The clothes? Well, this is what I hear: "Could she wear a more clingy dress?", "God, that's just slutty" and, the most damning critique, the incredulous "What's she wearing!"

Of course women looking at other women's clothes involves either envy or pity. But let's be honest: What was with the big lapel flowers in series three? That was quirky for the sake of it at a time when the show looked desperate to make a statement about itself. The op-shop look is just so passe. And darling, Swiss milkmaid was never a good look.

Okay, Sex and the City was a ground-breaking series. Can you think of another that talked about a sexual fantasy involving urination, was so refreshingly candid about oral sex, or even amused with some bedroom calisthenics?

It was also occasional moving: Carrie's break-up with Big, his subsequent engagement and then marriage offered some of the best episodes.

It had its clever post-modern moments, such as the referencing of The Way We Were and Pretty Woman.

The occasional star turn was a nice diversion from predictable storylines, Samantha's sexual epigrams and Charlotte's prudish reactions. There was Jon Bon Jovi as the feckless fellow who loses interest in women after he's slept with them (he tells this to Carrie in bed), Donovan Leitch and Alanis Morissette at the gender-bending party, the now-granddad from UNCLE David McCallum, Valerie Harper as Jewish mother (gee, surprise me), Mikhail Baryshnikov ...

Of the incidental cast, the appearances of Carrie's witty gay friend Stanford are always welcome: he says of Gwyneth Paltrow going to a shrink, "She suffers from high self-esteem". Shallow, bitchy and very funny.

But the concept of Sex and the City matured as the characters - except Samantha - changed and their lives became more complex. They start to have lives and develop more as people rather than the talking heads/clothes horses they too often are in the early series. Whether you want to sit through all of them to get to that is another matter.

Regrettably - just like M*A*S*H - what once seemed sharp and tart, and even loaded with astute subtexts and wry social analysis, can come off in extended replay as just another sitcom for which you sometimes put your brain on hold.

Time for a good book perhaps?