Sex and the City S1-6

Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda first sauntered onto the world’s screens more than 20 years ago!

In real life, Candace Bushnell was a ground-breaking columnist who wrote about her dating experiences for The New York Observer in the early 1990s, a profoundly enlightening expose of sexual freedom for women just as South Africa was awakening to its own democracy. These amusing anecdotes, from 1994 to 1996, were so good that she compiled them into a bestselling book called Sex and the City.

But her greatest fame would come from the breakthrough TV series of the same name, which was an equally pioneering show for television. Sarah Jessica Parker’s onscreen portrayal of the New York sex columnist Carrie and her equally empowered girl gang was a turning point for how women were depicted. Inside of being the sidekicks to men, the ditsy little woman, the object of a male character’s lust, Sex and the City made women the heroines, and (sometimes) the sexual predators. At the core of the story was the belief that women (admittedly in a sexually admissive age and seemingly always horny city) could be in control of their lives, and – specifically in this show – their sex lives. Academic papers have been written on this subject and how this remarkable TV show played such a great role.

It did more than turning stereotypes on their head: it made women strong, independent and just as capable as men in all respects, including making bad decisions.

Sex and the City – which won seven Emmys, eight Golden Globes and three Screen Actors Guild Awards – would come to define those heady days at the end of the Twentieth Century, as much as it would encapsulate the wildness of New York City.

Relive all your favourite moments by bingeing on the boxset of Sex and the City.