The Twilight of Chick TV

The debut of Sex and the City on HBO in 1998 was a financial blockbuster. The show, which followed four attractive Manhattan career women, soon spawned lines of merchandise--including martini-stamped t-shirts--bus tours around Manhattan, and themed ring tones and cell phone graphics from AT&T. HBO scored a syndication deal with TBS once the series ended.

Ten years later, with the Sex and the City movie hovering in the wings, two network knockoffs--Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle--have met with tougher times. Ratings have confirmed viewer distaste for the series, which a die-hard S.A.T.C. fan might compare to a Chinatown version of a Birkin bag. Not even close.

ABC was first to try to cash in on the best-friends-talk-sex formula, introducing Cashmere Mafia, in early January. The series, which featured three stylish women juggling kids, careers, and men in Manhattan, was canceled by the network after only seven poorly-watched episodes--a particular disappointment because of the involvement of Darren Star, one of the creators of Sex and the City. Critics pointed to the one-dimensional characters, and the obvious attempt to recreate Sex, as the show's main failings. Average viewers per episode totaled just 6.1 million, according to Nielsen--a paltry sum by network standards--and viewership declined steadily over the course of Cashmere's run.

Lipstick Jungle, NBC's Sex homage, started out with a greater aura of legitimacy thanks to the involvement of Candace Bushnell, who wrote the book on which the series was based, as well as the New York Observer column that eventually turned into Sex and the City.

But when it came to ratings, the series, which launched a month after Cashmere Mafia and has its season finale tonight, has fared even worse, averaging barely 6 million viewers per episode, and attracting just 7.4 million people to its debut, compared with Cashmere's 10.5 million. (This isn't this season's first programming disappointment for NBC. It moved
Quarterlife, a made-for-the-web TV show, to Bravo after one episode due to poor ratings.

NBC officials declined to comment on the record about the future of Lipstick Jungle, but despite the low numbers, additional scripts have been ordered, indicating that the network sees promise in the format. An announcement about a possible second season is expected to come in May.

That's the same month that New Line Cinema releases the Sex and the City movie, for which huge posters have already begun to plaster Manhattan. But after bingeing at the Blahnik buffet for so long, will viewers still crave a super-sized dose of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte? Neither Michael Patrick King, a Sex and the City producer and the movie's director, nor Candace Bushnell, were available to comment on the question.

Faced with the glut of girly programming, viewers might end up feeling like a S.A.T.C. character with too many suitors, and conclude that sometimes, it's best just to go home alone.

Sophia Banay