Sex and the City is an American romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star for HBO , based on the newspaper column and book by Candace Bushnell. It premiered in the United States on June 6, , and concluded on February 22, , with 94 episodes broadcast over six seasons. It had various producers, screenwriters and directors, principally Michael Patrick King. The series follows the lives of four female friends living in New York City: the streetwise newspaper columnist Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker , the sexually liberated public relations professional Samantha Jones played by Kim Cattrall , the more conservative art dealer Charlotte York played by Kristin Davis and the cynical lawyer Miranda Hobbes played by Cynthia Nixon.
The stories address sex, relationships, friendship and femininity. Sex and the City has received both acclaim and criticism for its characters and themes, and is credited with helping to increase HBO's popularity as a network. The series was ranked fifth on Entertainment Weekly 's "New TV Classics" list, [ 2 ] and has been cited as one of the best television series of all time.
A sequel series, And Just Like That The show is based on writer Candace Bushnell 's column " Sex and the City ", published in The New York Observer , which was later compiled into a book of the same name. Bushnell has mentioned in several interviews that the character of Carrie Bradshaw in her columns is her alter ego.
Initially, she wrote the column from her first-person perspective but later invented Carrie, introduced as Bushnell's friend, so her parents would not realize they were reading about her own sex life.
Both Bushnell and the television version of Carrie who had no last name in the column share the same initials, further emphasizing their connection. Like Bushnell, Carrie writes columns for the fictional New York Star , which are eventually compiled into a book within the series, and later becomes a writer for Vogue.
