Sex and The City is returning to the small screen after a long absence, but the revival’s decision to go ahead without Kim Cattrall as Samantha is a mistake. After 6 seasons of acclaimed comedy-drama, HBO's boundary-pushing Sex and The City came to a close before the phenomenon could outstay its welcome. A staple of 1990s television, the initially edgy and sometimes shocking Sex and The City became more conventional as its many imitators attempted to out-shock the original.
By the time it reached its conclusion, little of Sex and The City’s initial edge remained, and the series based on Candace Bushnell's book was closer to a standard rom-com than the spikier subversion of the genre that it began as. However, one character from the show's central quartet refused easy categorization and eschewed fairy tale monogamy even as Sex and The City began pairing off its leads and leaving them with children and marriages. Kim Cattrall’s Samantha, always the most unapologetically sex-positive of the quartet, was the lone central figure not married off by Sex and The City’s close, and even the critically-maligned Sex and The City movies maintained her character’s adamant singledom.
As such, the news that Sex and The City is soon to be revived sans Samantha came as a disappointing surprise to many fans of the original series and its spin-off movies. The revival’s choice to jettison Samantha (presumably either by killing her off or writing her out, although little is known at this stage) is a mistake as the bawdy, bitchy heroine was the heart of the original series, and what made Sex and The City more memorable than even its most recent imitators such as Emily In Paris. Throughout the groundbreaking dramedy’s six seasons, Cattrall’s character was the figure whose filthy sense of humor and no-nonsense attitude toward the worlds of sex and singledom kept the friends — and the show itself — afloat.
Viewers may have seen themselves in Charlotte’s meek charms or Miranda’s sardonic wit, but there was no denying that the beating heart of Sex and The City was Samantha, the most sex-positive of the central quartet and the least inhibited when it came to the titular pursuit. Sexually adventurous (and often hilariously voracious in that arena), Cattrall’s Samantha wore her heart on her sleeve where the neurotic Carrie, the reserved Charlotte, and the sensible Miranda were less shamelessly effusive. Her over-the-top antics made the surrounding ensemble a better-balanced bunch, much like New Girl's Schmidt or How I Met Your Mother's Barney filled out their respective show's requirement for an amoral-but-lovable lead.
Without a brash Samantha, the group’s dynamic will be irreversibly thrown off, with no outspoken but deeply likable character to ground the remaining trio. The prospect of a Samantha-less Sex and The City reminds viewers that Cattrall’s character was the source of much of the show’s often-praised open-mindedness toward sex and sexuality, and the HBO series would be a more dour and lifeless affair without her endless sexual misadventures and frequent moments of sparkling wit. After the relative failure of the short-lived prequel series The Carrie Diaries, fans may be glad to see Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda onscreen again, but without Cattrall's contributions, the Sex and The City revival is likely to be a sad shadow of the inimitable original.