The Divaniamo: And Just Like That podcast, the (divisive) return of Sex and the City

“Welcome to the age of anti-innocence. Nobody has breakfast at Tiffany’s and nobody has any stories to remember. We have breakfast at seven and have stories that we try to forget as quickly as possible ». These are the words with which Carrie Bradshaw welcomed us aboard a spacecraft that has continued to soar for twenty years and from which no one seems to want to get off: Sex and the City. The series, inspired by Candance Bushnell’s novel of the same name and aired for the first time on HBO on June 6, 1998, tells the story of four friends living in Manhattan who, between relationships and gallant encounters, try to find their place in the world. Better with a man next to you. Enthusiastically received by critics and the public, Sex and the City it has quickly become an international brand, a brand capable of giving voice to the outbursts that until then women kept only for themselves (after all, it was certainly not a common custom to talk about the taste of male sperm).

Today, 23 years after the first episode, the series returns with a revival, And Just Like That, broadcast simultaneously with the American broadcast on Sky, which tells us about the lives of Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda over the age of fifty. What’s good about bringing back to life an experiment that some people consider surpassed by more intriguing and profound products? And what is wrong with giving a voice to the first women who, with a six-season series and two films in the cinema, have done more than many feminist battles? The tenth episode of We divan, the Vanity Fair podcast dedicated to cinema and TV releases, asks this, going deep into a revival that fans and critics have been waiting for with a mix of curiosity and terror. Would the expectations of the original series be honored and betrayed? Would the adaptation to today’s times have been harmonious or forced?

In all this time, it is clear that the protagonists have moved on, forced to compete with a world and a New York very different from the ones they knew. Carrie has become a regular on a podcast that doesn’t consider her unscrupulous enough to talk about sex; Miranda struggles with her son Brady’s crazed hormones and Charlotte continues to be the same Pollyanna she has always been, obsessed with perfection and locked away in her little middle-class world of Oscar De La Renta’s flowery dresses and pearl necklaces. Along with the quadrille of new, more inclusive characters – such as Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) and Che (Sara Ramirez, the Callie of Grey’s Anatomy) -, to catalyze the attention of the public was a twist that few would have expected and which, in fact, allowed to And Just Like That to tell a new side of the private life of the three best friends. The result, as is often the case, pleases some and irritates others. But where is the truth?

Have a good listening!

The Vanity Fair podcast «Divaniamo» is available on iTunes, Spreaker and Spotify.