Sex and the City: Season One

This multi-award winning series chronicles the life and times of four single thirty something single women in New York. The group talk frankly about their sexual relationships and those thorns in their sides known as the male of the species.

Carrie Bradshaw writes a weekly newspaper sex and relationships column called "Sex and the City" for a New York paper. The column is made up of her daily experiences with her own boyfriends and those of her best friends Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha. Miranda Hobbes is a workaholic corporate lawyer who is deeply cynical of all men but fears being alone.

Charlotte York is an art dealer who likes to be wooed the old fashioned way with a knight in shining armour ready to sweep her off her feet. During the groups dissections of their previous nights adventures Charlotte is always the prudish one who is reluctant to discuss her sex life or try anything "different". Samantha Jones is public relations executive (and by far the most sexy of the group) who is a complete nymphomaniac who manages to bed any man she fancies but never manages to hold onto a relationship (although I have my doubts that she actually wants to). Between them they are managing to sleep through the male population of New York as they look for Mr. Right.

Episode Details

With this being the first season there are only twelve episodes in the series. These are split over two discs which contain the following episodes:-

Disc One

Disc Two

The picture is absolutely hideous with each and every episode suffering from a low bit-rate and huge amount of graininess. I thought these sort of discs were firmly in the past but HBO have released a complete shocker and the video version positively shines in comparison. What makes this region two disc even worse is the fact that there is a hastily placed sticker warning that the disc is NTSC, definitely a problem if your television is more than seven years old and is incapable of NTSC playback.

The sound is reasonable enough with a fair amount of ambient effects appearing in the surround channel from the city and the many clubs the girls go into. With Carrie providing plenty of comments to camera the dialogue is clear and precise and it is probably the only good thing about the sound and video reproduction on this disc.

The menu is surprisingly good for a television series with a menu system which is nicely presented and scored. Each episode is accompanied by the preview trailer and, if rather pointless, textual synopsis. There's also a rather good "behind the scenes" featurette along with some additional "filler" material on the cast and crew. However, one additional item of interest is the long list of awards and award nominations. It certainly goes to show just how much of an impact this groundbreaking show had.

This series makes a really refreshing change from the normal hum-drum material churned out in the USA. Not only does it contain an abundant use of the f-word, which is initially quite shocking for a television series, but both men and women will find it extremely funny. There's certainly plenty of male-bashing but the tables have turned and the women are getting their own back. Mind you, it certainly puts the message across that women aren't angels and their comments are not far off the truth either!