Sex and the City as a milestone in television drama

In 1998, following the success of Candace Bushnell's 1996 collection of stories by the same name, America's premier cable channel, HBO, unveiled its new Sunday night comedy-drama, Sex and the City. Its TV incarnation retained the book's glossy milieu but repositioned the narrative entirely, by replacing much of its cold cynicism with wry comedy and focusing on a complex but endearing central female protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), and her three best friends.

There are numerous reasons why Sex and the City warrants attention in the project outlined here. First, SATC captured the imagination and attention of modern-day women like no other contemporary television text, attaining a currency which has continued beyond the fact of the show's demise in 2004. From its tangible influence on high-street fashion trends, to spin-off TV documentaries, to its prevalence as a touchstone in 'serious' media discussions about contemporary feminism, SATC's cultural influence has been felt in ubiquitous and diverse ways, but particularly by women. Industry audience research has underlined this cultural impact among young women especially; when over 10 million people tuned in for the series finale in the US in February 2004, the series topped the broadcast networks among female viewers aged 18-34.

The ongoing recurrence of articles on SATC and its stars in women's magazines is testament to how the programme won an exceptional, affectionate place as a privileged site of shared televisual experience and social interaction among female fans. This book will examine how the programme managed to attain this status among women audiences. It explores its characters, its careful generic balance of comedy and drama, its mix of both fantasy and realism (particularly around the representation of fashion and the city) and examines how television has rarely dedicated such focus to women's friendships. Equally, while fully recognising the progressive import of the programmer's unapologetic delight in female friendship, this book will also address the narrow representation of and address to women engendered by the programme, where, problematically, a virtually entirely affluent, white and heterosexual vision of New York is imagined.

Second, the broader media reception of the programme was remarkable, both in terms of sheer column inches dedicated to it and in terms of the earnest and contradictory responses it incorporated. In a passionately divided critical reception, commentators locked horns over the programmes feminist credentials. Was it offering perceptive and thought-provoking insights into the real challenges and life-choices facing women under 'third wave feminism' regarding work, marriage and motherhood? Or did it merely demean such debates, and women themselves, by hegemonically representing women as still ultimately consumed by the desire to find 'Mr. Right'? Subsequently, responses to SATC crystallised a number of contemporary concerns, not just about the instability of modern gender roles but about the medium of television itself. The unsurpassed sexual candour precipitated by its thematic preoccupations instigated widespread discussion about the boundaries of taste and explicitness on television. In this sense, then, the innovations SATC brought to television were perhaps less about aesthetics and more about its determination to push the narrative, thematic and language boundaries observed by the medium.

Finally, for TV Studies the programmes success raises other significant issues. Its extraordinary transformation of Sarah Jessica Parker into a fashion icon demands that we revisit and reconsider the common conceptualisation of stardom as the exclusive preserve of cinema. Furthermore, the programme has made 'celebrities' of its producer and designer; this creative mix, alongside the quirky, maverick channel identity of HBO and role of Bushnell, points to how SATC embodies the elusive nature of TV authorship.