Sex and the City

Each slight, breezy half-hour is fresh and funny.

As shamelessly superficial as the crowd it memorializes, but so sophisticated in its approach to shallowness that it's also great fun. [5 June 1998, p.F28]

When the series moves away from stereotyping its main female characters into the slutty (Kim Cattrall), the savvy (Cynthia Nixon) and the sweet (Kristin Davis), and dives right into the muck of the boy-girl thing, it's laugh-out-loud funny. [6 June 1998, p.1C]

Parker projects a saucy style, but her Carrie character comes across as an arrogant skeptic with an I-don't-really-care attitude. She avoids emotional risks. Despite her rampant curiosity and calculated posing, Carrie prefers to keep her distance as a journalist. [4 June 1998, p.43]

Almost none of the characters is particularly likable - unless he or she is angling for something. What's refreshing about Sex and the City is that it pushes to a darkly comic extreme the situations that already fuel the many urban-singles sitcoms on network TV, particularly those with female leads like "Suddenly Susan" and "Caroline in the City." More social satire than sitcom, it looks openly at relationships steeped in ambivalence, fear, and the games people play. [6 Jun 1998, p.C6]