subject: Is Sex and the City the New Golden Girls? [print this page] Sex and the City started off wellSex and the City started off well. Beginning as a celebration of women who didn't need men in order to lead fulfilling and successful lives, the show was quickly swallowed up by many ladies who were pleased to see a refreshing dose of strong female characters as its leading protagonists. Have we seen such a line up before? Weren't there four similarly strong, similarly sassy ladies taking the helm in hit comedy the Golden Girls? But most importantly - did the Golden Girls ever end up selling out in the way that, sadly, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte did?
There's no question that Sex and the City brought with it a powerful punch of female strength and duress - like the Spice Girls of television, though perhaps not quite so capable of drawing leagues of obsessive fans. Instead of focussing on men, men, men - though a shallow reading of the show can't help but conclude the four leading ladies do discuss men and their bedroom lives a lot - the show was a stringent reminder on the power of friendship, femininity and how our friends are our family we choose. Each of the four characters couldn't be more different from the next one, but the love, warmth and support they offer one another is an inspiration to any woman who thinks she can't be happy unless she has a boyfriend.
It's a formula we've seen before, though. Just as our four New Yorkers struggle their way through life, love and friendship, narrated by main character Carrie Bradshaw in her no holds barred column that links each episode with its theme, the Golden Girls - Blanche, Dorothy, Sophia and Rose undergo the same type of challenge and overcoming. Just like the Sex and the City stars, the Golden Girls are also searching for their place in life and love - and just like our younger, fashionable friends, they all know that they can at least count on each other, if nothing else.
The two shows do indeed present a plethora of similarities and have even been compared to the extent that Sex and the City has been called a prelude to the Golden Girls - if Samantha was Carrie's mother, that is. Whatever you think about the feminist lessons to be gained from each show and how well they adhered to their initial promises, both are well worth watching on free Sky TV - if only for the laughs.
