RT25 First Reviews Flashback: Sex and the City

RT25 First Reviews Flashback: Sex and the City

Rotten Tomatoes launched 25 years ago in August 1998, bringing the iconic Tomatometer into households nationwide. Certified Fresh was born six years later and, in 2013, we began aggregating reviews and dishing out scores for TV series. In celebration of our 25th birthday, we’re taking a look back at some of the most impactful TV shows that premiered the same year we did. We previously shined a light on Dawson’s Creek, Felicity , and now we’re taking a look at Sex and the City. Sex and the City stars Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kim Cattrall. (Photo...

Rotten Tomatoes launched 25 years ago in August 1998, bringing the iconic Tomatometer into households nationwide. Certified Fresh was born six years later and, in 2013, we began aggregating reviews and dishing out scores for TV series. In celebration of our 25th birthday, we’re taking a look back at some of the most impactful TV shows that premiered the same year we did. We previously shined a light on Dawson’s Creek, Felicity , and now we’re taking a look at Sex and the City. Sex and the City stars Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kim Cattrall. (Photo by HBO) Sex and the City follows newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her close friends Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis), as they tackle the challenges of finding love, success, and happiness in the hustle and bustle of New York City.
The series was created by Darren Star (Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, Emily in Paris) and inspired by writer Candace Bushnell’s book Sex and the City, which collected her New York Observer essays (originally published between 1994 and 1996). The essays recounted her and her friends’ experiences as single women in their 30s exploring the New York dating scene. Sarah Jessica Parker stars in Sex and the City (Photo by HBO) Before Sex and the City premiered on television, the notion of a program centered on a group of women who shared authentic love and friendship with each other may have been foreign to both audiences and the predominantly male execs making the creative decisions behind the camera. Placing the show on HBO was looked at as a good bet as, up until that point, cable was viewed as a dropping-off point for what many perceived to be low-brow entertainment.
“Who cares about yet another batch of whiny New Yorkers? I’ve had enough,” Ken Parish Perkins of the Fort Worth Star Telegram said. “Besides, I think Star has merely brought a Melrose Place with nudity to the place where he could get away with it — cable…”
(Just a year later, The Sopranos premiered and forever changed the television game and put HBO on the map.) Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kim Cattrall star in Sex and the City Exploring sex and relationships through a female perspective wasn’t something television critics were necessarily ready for in 1998. Feedback for the first episodes found critics (mostly men at the time) knocking the program for its depiction of adult women who, instead of following dated TV patriarchal norms for women of wife and mother, ventured out into the world to “live, laugh, love.” “Don’t waste your time watching this act of sexual suicide dressed up for a television project,” Rick Bentley of the Fresno Bee wrote.
In his review of the season’s premiere, Greg Hassall of the Sydney Morning Herald reported a collective disappointment over the show’s lack of nudity. Sex and the City – in all its gossip-tinged soapy drama – walked so that shows like Girls , The Bold Type , and Insecure could run. After six seasons, a prequel series (The Carrie Diaries), two movies, and the current sequel series And Just Like That … (now gearing up for its season 2 premiere on June 22), it’s clear that Darren Star’s series did something right.
Audiences everywhere found themselves and their friends identifying as either a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, or Charlotte, and 25 years later, it seems they still are. It may not be included in the same conversations as some other peak TV entries, but Sex and the City’s impact on society and TV legacy is worth celebrating.
Here’s what critics said about season 1 of Sex and the City when it first arrived. Sex and the City is undeniably downcast and despairing about relationships. It is also a clever, articulate, sophisticated late-night view for mature audiences. –Kinney Littlefiel...