The writing is clunky and the acting often shoddy – but And Just Like That is starting to find its groove

When And Just Like That, the critically maligned sequel to Sex and the City, premiered in 2021, it was greeted by a cacophony of social media outrage. The original show, after all, was one of the most beloved series of the new millennium, running for 94 episodes and inspiring a generation of women to talk more openly about desire and ambition. And its follow-up? Insipid dross. But now, as it enters its third season, has And Just Like That finally found its groove?

Back in New York, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is missing Aidan (John Corbett), who has returned to Virginia to deal with a family crisis, putting their relationship on a (crazy) five-year pause. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) continues to explore her later-in-life lesbianism, with predictably mixed results. And Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is busy with the usual domestic nonsense – controversies in the dog park, Ivy League applications, spousal incontinence – that keeps her occupied. In short, life goes on with the minimal amount of turbulence required to sustain some tension. Can Charlotte and husband Harry (Evan Handler) maintain their happy balance? Will Miranda’s flirtation with a British TV producer, Joy (Dolly Wells), turn into something substantial? And, most importantly, can Carrie and Aidan really make the sexless (and, for him, cityless) distance work? “How you gonna be in a relationship if you don’t even know when he’s going to be coming back?” her confidante, Anthony (Mario Cantone), asks, sanely. “Who are you? Friggin’ Rapunzel?”

Around the central trio, And Just Like That has introduced a series of new characters, with mixed success. As the show has matured, however, showrunner Michael Patrick King has seen fit to dispense with some of the lower-yield contributors. Miranda’s former lover, Che (Sara Ramírez), is gone, having proved extremely divisive with fans (in the way that non-binary characters and performers tend to in our current social climate). Karen Pittman also doesn’t return as Nya, which leaves powerhouse realtor Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and powerhouse (to be honest, And Just Like That doesn’t deal in anything less than “powerhouse” women) documentarian Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) as the surviving newbies. It keeps the mix cleaner, because the fusion of old and new has never been especially convincing.

But the culling of extraneous characters is typical of a new reality for And Just Like That. The show has never been good, in an objective sense. It stripped Sex and the City of its early bite, creating a fantasy of fulfilled socio-economic aspiration. It observed an America that is vexingly apolitical (“The BBC sent me to find out why you Americans haven’t fixed the world yet,” Joy tells Miranda, as though the past decade hasn’t happened). The writing is clunky (“maybe don’t order so much fast fashion”, Charlotte’s woke kid, Rock (Alexa Swinton), scolds. “It’s killing the environment!”) and the acting, particularly from Davis who has never been able to operate in more than one gear, unconvincing. Yet, despite all that, the show feels more confident now. In its third season, it is being refined back to what the viewers (the ones who haven’t already given up) want more of.

First and foremost, that’s the central dynamic between the original cast members. King feels comfortable stewarding them into their sixties, showing their lives to be just as messy and exciting as ever. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” Carrie barks over the phone. “The phrase that’s haunted me for decades!” Then there are the impossibly hot younger men – a landscape gardener played by Logan Marshall-Green and an archive researcher played by Mehcad Brooks – who appear in their lives with comforting reliability. Aidan, meanwhile, purrs things like “you’re as hot as a gas station calendar girl”, and generally exists as wish fulfilment for a generation of women and men disappointed by the realities of their husbands. And Just Like That might be toothless compared to Sex and the City, but it’s started to clip in the dentures.

The show hasn’t qualitatively improved; it’s just removed some of the less coherent elements and winnowed its audience down to the hardcore fans, for whom the show probably worked anyway. What’s left is formulaic and arranged in digestible layers for minimum offence – like a glass of parfait – but if you want consistency, then And Just Like That delivers. That evolution, from controversial reboot to inoffensive serial, might spawn fewer social media reactions, but it makes for a far smoother watch.