Watch Sex and the City

Sex and the City is the iconic HBO series starring Sarah Jessica Parker as journalist Carrie Bradshaw. The show immediately captured the attention of women when it premiered in 1998. It was the first time that women over the age of 30 had a show that spoke directly to them. Sex and the City sparked the beginning of a cultural moment that encouraged women to talk to each other more freely. Talking about the show was sometimes more entertaining than actually watching the show, which eventually cast a larger than life shadow over real-life New York City.

Carrie is the most conventional thinker of her group of friends. She is a reluctant romantic, slow to admit when she has fallen in love. She sometimes finds herself caught between her inner desires and the social expectations of modern, liberated women. Miranda, played by Cynthia Nixon, is an uptight lawyer who represents the voice of reason. Kristin Davis plays Charlotte, who is pure and innocent. She is often shocked by the uncouth manners of New Yorkers, and she has trouble figuring out how to have casual relationships. It is not surprising when she finds herself in an unsatisfying marriage. Kim Cattrall's Samantha is hard to take seriously. She is brash and sexually liberated, but she occasionally speaks truths that resonate with all women.

Sex and the City follows these four friends as they fall in and out of relationships with men, but the love the women have for each other always takes precedence. Viewers turned every episode into an event, dressing up like their favorite characters and drinking cosmopolitans. The show's stylist, Patricia Field, became a fashion celebrity. She outfitted the actresses in clothes that had nothing to do with prevailing trends and subsequently started a large number of them. Manolo Blahnik shoes were virtually unknown until Carrie announced her obsession with them. Women started wearing nameplate necklaces and large flower brooches when Carrie wore them on television. New York City saw an onslaught of Sex and the City-related tourism. Even the tiny Magnolia Cafe received customers in droves after Carrie bought desserts there.

Sex and the City started out as a gritty portrait of real women making it in the city. It evolved into a campy lifestyle fantasy, which is either a downturn or an improvement depending on one's perspective. The show remains one of the definitive programs of the new millennium.

Sex and the City is a series that ran for 6 seasons (94 episodes) between June 6, 1998 and on HBO