And just like that, it's over End of the spinoff follows slow decline of a magical TV favourite

After 27 years, some of TV's most beloved characters have left our screens forever.

- Rebecca Nicholson

Throughout Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw chronicled her loves, infatuations, affairs, heartbreaks, friendships, high fashion, homes, work and more, all over a cosmopolitan or five.

Throughout what would turn out to be the final season of its spinoff, And Just Like That, she finally ended her extremely on/off 20-year-relationship with country boy Aidan, a man revived for the series with a cruel streak and all the subtlety of Elmer Fudd, and slowly bought furniture for her mansion.

In many ways, the entire series was an inglorious swansong. And Just Like That appeared in 2021, and devotees of the original might have held a tentative flicker of hope that in returning to these characters, now in their 50s, it might find a way to repurpose its former magic for a new stage of life.

It began with a splash by killing off Carrie's husband, Mr Big, who had a heart attack while overdoing it on his stationary exercise bike. Some felt that such a casual death was disrespectful to the show's history – something that would become a running theme – but it did, at least, suggest the series was not going to hold back, or tiptoe around its past and legacy.