Sex and the City already had a great follow-up - and it wasn't And Just Like That. Sex and the City, based on the newspaper columns by writer Candace Bushnell, became extremely popular during its run. This popularity led to two feature films and a sequel series, And Just Like That, but it also spawned a prequel, The Carrie Diaries, based on a 2010 book of the same name by Bushnell.
The Carrie Diaries, which aired on the CW for two seasons from 2013 to 2014, starred AnnaSophia Robb, known for playing Violet Beauregarde in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as a young Carrie Bradshaw. The show followed Carrie as a high schooler in the 1980s who ends up getting a job at Interview magazine while working as an intern at a law firm in New York City. Throughout the show, Carrie falls in love not only with boys but also with fashion and New York City, which sets a path for the future Carrie of Sex and the City.
The Carrie Diaries is a great follow-up to Sex and the City because it maintained the elements that made Sex and the City so iconic. The Carrie Diaries utilizes Carrie's voiceover narration as a storytelling device, a framing choice that And Just Like That departed from. Carrie's voiceovers were an interesting part of both SATC and The Carrie Diaries because not only did they have Carrie acting as an omniscient narrator, but they also left room for her to make witty one-liners and observations to add some lightness to each episode's storylines. While Sex and the City had Carrie's thoughts be part of a newspaper column, Carrie writes in a journal in The Carrie Diaries, in a perfect for a younger version of the character that foreshadows her later career. In comparison, the lack of Carrie's voiceover narration in And Just Like That loses one of the central elements that made SATC so interesting and unique.
One of the other benefits to The Carrie Diaries that makes it a superior spin-off of Sex and the City to And Just Like That is that it includes Samantha Jones and her relationship with Carrie. One of the reasons why And Just Like That didn't work as a sequel series to SATC was because of Samantha's absence due to a feud with Carrie. Kim Cattrall refused to be in the show because of her real-life feud with Sarah Jessica Parker, so the show wrote off Samantha by having her move to London after Carrie drops her as a publicist. And Just Like That shows Carrie texting Samantha, but it's not the same as actually having her around and her absence loses a major dynamic that made Sex and the City work so well.
By comparison, Samantha is a prominent character in The Carrie Diaries season 2. Played by Lindsey Gort, Samantha first meets Carrie when the latter character is locked out of her apartment after a disastrous night out. Samantha's introduction was a great decision made by The Carrie Diaries because it gave audiences a look at a younger Samantha Jones and the origins of her friendship with Carrie, providing more depth to the characters' origin stories. The show was also made more interesting because of Samantha's romantic escapades and her appearance on The Carrie Diaries makes it clear that And Just Like That needed Samantha; the show wasn't the same without her.
As an anticipated sequel to such a popular show, And Just Like That was always going to face comparisons to Sex and the City. While some updates to the show in And Just Like That, most notably improving on the original show's problematic history with characters of color and queer characters, the sequel series falls short as a successor to SATC. Though it was a teen show, The Carrie Diaries feels like a better follow-up that's more in the spirit of Sex and the City. Amy B. Harris, the creator and executive producer of The Carrie Diaries, revealed that had the show not been canceled, it would've introduced Charlotte and Miranda (via E! News), which would've evoked the vibes of the original Sex and the City even more.