Season five of The Bold Type is finally available to stream on the BBC iPlayer, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

It has that familiar ’Sex And The City in its heyday’ quality, when the foursome sipped cosmopolitans, discussed anal sex in taxis and regularly put the world to right over lunch.

The trio – in this case Jane, Sutton and Kat – embody the best of the enviable single New York City lifestyle. Each episode is centred around whatever the issue is in Jane’s (Katie Stevens) latest article, while Sutton (Meghan Fahy) is on hand to cover the fashion shoots and Kat (Aisha Dee) rounds it off with stellar discussions on social media.

As is the case with Sex And The City (SATC), there’s a sense that Jane, Kat and Sutton aren’t just each other’s friends, but our own. We see ourselves in their career struggles, uncertain love lives and fluid sexuality, as they attempt to understand their ever-evolving identities.

For many, that familiar ease with the main characters is a thing of the past in the SATC universe. The second season of And Just Like That (AJLT) has somewhat derailed the perception we had of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Co. While the show has attempted to address some of the most significant errors from the original series – specifically LGBTQ+ representation and diversity – AJLT has been criticised by some of the original SATC fans for losing the essence of the characters.

For many, the spin-off has lost the best quality of the original, which was the bond between the four (now three) women. The remaining trio have hardly had any screentime together to dissect the events of their lives – a marked difference from the time that Charlotte (Kristin Davis) described them as each other’s soul mates.

It’s as though AJLT is having a mid-life identity crisis: Carrie has ditched her brownstone (and forgot a “rent-controlled apartment overlooking the park is forever”). Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is almost unrecognisable at times – after scorning Carrie for following a man to Paris, she does the same thing with Che. She no longer dishes out the much-needed no-nonsense advice to her friends anymore either, and without it, they’re worse off. Not to mention the gaping hole that Samantha Jones has left on our screens and in our hearts.

Now these formerly inseparable women are isolated, which is something that Kat, Sutton and Jane would never do. Even when Jane briefly left the world of Scarlett to pursue hard-hitting journalism, there wasn’t an episode when the trio didn’t meet in the fashion closet to catch up.

There’s also so much more to The Bold Type than SATC. From Jane writing a personal essay about how she can’t orgasm to Kat falling for a female friend and Sutton asking for her lunch to be included in her salary in order to afford rent, the series remedies a lot of the glamorised, whitewashed world established in SATC.  

It’s a refreshing dose of reality as topical issues from politics and racial discrimination to sexual harassment are all explored through a woman’s perspective, and it’s woven in with the wardrobe and social life of our dreams. Season five is no different.

Jane, Sutton and Kat are once again challenged by life in new ways: Jane’s credibility is questioned, Sutton navigates a divorce and Kat reconnects with a former flame (that she left for a good reason).

These imperfect strong female characters are grounded so deeply in a world that we recognise – complete with struggles women continue to face every day – that they remain relatable through it all. Even though they’re always evolving as a result of their experiences, the characters stay true to who they are; if anything, they become more authentic compared to the jarring experience of AJLT.

SATC will always be the blueprint for female-led TV shows and, rightly or wrongly, the benchmark that future series are compared to, especially when they’re set in New York, involve careers in journalism or openly discuss their sex lives (or, in this case, all three). 

But there are times when SATC falls short. In parts, it’s painfully outdated, particularly when it comes to feminism, careers, sexuality and LGBTQ+ representation. AJLT is the underwhelming proof that you can’t just overhaul that legacy with a few changes.

The Bold Type is refreshing due to its realism; there’s diversity in the main cast, and it explores bisexuality, sexual liberation and female friendship in a non-judgmental, candid way. Sutton and Jane go on Kat’s bisexual journey with her – they want every single juicy detail of her antics (and her heart) as it unfolds.

Miranda is robbed of that opportunity, potentially as the original series had such a binary, straight view of relationships, so perhaps they didn’t know how to explore that more with her friends. After all, Carrie was freaked out when she dated a bisexual man and struggled to process that Samantha could date a woman, suggesting she had just “ran out of men”.

The rigid opinions and judgments outlined in SATC seem hard to shake even 30 years later, so it might be time to invest in a fresh show that has always championed intersectional feminism.

If you need a dose of sex, glamour and an unwavering bond forged in true female friendship, go right ahead and watch The Bold Type.

Images: BBC; Sky/HBO Max