Twenty years ago, I developed a love-hate relationship with the television series Sex and the City. Back then, like many women in their twenties and thirties, I was mesmerised by this saga of New York dating, friendship, fashion and career dramas, based on a book by the columnist Candace Bushnell.
But I also found it irritating that the four sassy women in the show were so obsessed by men that they rarely discussed anything else. “Is this really what feminism is about?” I would sometimes grumble to my female friends, before switching on the TV for the next addictive SATC fix.
Now, having recently turned 60, Bushnell is back and giving the idea of female friendship an intriguing new twist. Post-SATC, her own life did not always stick to the script: she divorced from her “Mr Big” and became so exhausted with Manhattan that she left for the countryside.