'Desperate Housewives' Is Cooler Than 'Sex and the City': Even the Creators Seemed to Realize It
You can understand this from one fact about the creation of the project.
In February 2004, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda took to the streets of Manhattan for the last time — HBO closed the cult series Sex and the City after six seasons.
And already in October of the same year, some eight months later, the first bell of a new era rang on American television — Desperate Housewives came out. Coincidence? We don't think so.
The project that turned TV upside down
Sex... taught the public to look at female friendship without prudishness: with scars, sex, brunches and tactless girlfriends. But Housewives took a step further, they brought the heroines down from the skies into the realities of married life, mortgages, teenagers with a crisis of confidence and trash cans by the gate.
Instead of gloss — grotesque, instead of beautiful shoes — a neighbor's funeral and the secrets of a small town.
Initially conceived as a sequel
Showrunner Marc Cherry, inspired by Sex and the City, wanted to invite the same actresses. But his series turned out to be not a glamorous carbon copy, but a full-fledged response to the challenges of the new decade.
Desperate Housewives turned out to be much better than the "original" and lasted much longer on air. It seems that the creators of Sex... simply decided to wrap up the story after learning about what a bomb would come out on TV.
The project came out at a time when the viewer was no longer satisfied with Carrie's chatty voiceover. They wanted a plot, intrigue, pain and real blood under a perfect manicure.
Sex and the Сity is a comedy with dramatic overtones, where problems can be solved with one good conversation with friends. Housewives is a dramedy with elements of a thriller, detective and social criticism, where nothing can be solved with a conversation, and even a disaster can start over a cup of coffee. And that's why the series is rewatched years later, it has aged well, unlike its opponent.
And, what is especially important: if the heroines of Sex... hardly change from season to season, then the housewives evolve. Someone loses her husband, someone loses herself, someone takes off her rose-colored glasses. It is interesting to follow them not because they are fashionable, but because they resemble our neighbors, acquaintances and relatives.
