Dear Miss Jones,

Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I remember covertly watching episodes of Sex and the City as a young teenager while I was (supposedly) channel hopping. Of course, I managed to catch the most outrageous scenes (the one with the woman giving her husband a tantric massage in front of her class and Miranda getting splattered with…stuff). I can’t even remember when I officially sat down to watch a full episode consciously, or which episode it was. Suffice it to say I loved it. 

I knew that I enjoyed the quick-witted banter the girls engaged in over brightly coloured cocktails. The straight-talking sexual content and the fabulously outrageous outfits. What I hated was…well you.

The hatred was visceral. Far too visceral, in fact, for a fictional character. So much so that every time you were on screen, I either groaned or rolled my eyes so hard I almost pulled something. I called you horrible words like; slut. Words that I’m sure singed my tongue as they bounced off. I groused how you were ‘too old’ for the role, and it was frankly embarrassing to watch you. I laughed at your embarrassing moments with a kind of spiteful glee I wouldn’t like to have thought myself capable under other circumstances. 

I would like to take this opportunity to offer you my sincerest and humblest apologies. Initially, I could blame my immature teenage self for not knowing any better. 

Now, with the SATC reboot, And Just Like That, going into its third season and at the age of thirty-something now myself,  I have been forced to reevaluate. Particularly since you are barely involved in the reboot, much to most fans’ ire. I couldn’t help but wonder, Why did I hate you so much? 

The answer is, rather unsurprisingly, jealousy. 

One of your main character traits is your self-assured sexuality. I have never had that, even now. I am depressingly British about the whole thing. Particularly body confidence. You do have an amazing body, way better than mine, and you are nearly twice my age. Why shouldn’t you celebrate such a banging bod? Maybe it’s that pesky Britishness again, but I was brought up not to show off (or if you do, make sure it’s humble or self-deprecating). In the first series, when the rest of the girls are indulging in the age-old feminine tradition of complaining about various body parts (S1, Ep 2), you do not partake. In fact, you say, “I happen to love the way I look”. And there it is, the sentence that conventionally attractive women are never supposed to say. Hadn’t you got the memo? It’s unattractive to consider yourself…attractive. 

Having an active sex life and revelling in it is something women have been criticised for throughout the centuries. And there I was doing the same thing. The irony of it went right over my teenage, backcombed head. I considered myself a feminist. I even had earrings that proclaimed me as such! I was a Sylvia Plath fan! I had even read The Female Eunuch (well, most of it). How could I not see that I was engaging in internalised misogyny?

As the comedian Iliza Schlesinger said, “don’t call each other whores. Don’t call each other sluts. Because when you do that, society looks at you and they say, ‘Oh, it’s okay to talk about women that way.’” And that’s what I did. I watched other characters like Charlie from Two and a Half Men or Joey from Friends seducing multiple women. I thought they were cool and charming. Isn’t it awesome that all the girls want them? How ultimately warped was my logic? 

I was essentially trying on the identity of a feminist the same way I did with goth and electro fashions. I shouted about wanting to be paid the same as a man for the same job, but felt vindicated in throwing fellow women under the bus for not conforming to rigid gender roles and sensibilities. I was wrong, I see that now.

Looking at you with this new information, I would now argue that you are the most feminist of the group. My younger self would have guffawed, but it’s true. A wealthy owner of a successful PR agency who bought her own apartment in NYC. How unlike Carrie, who spent the entirety of the show chasing after a man who made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t his first choice. Or Charlotte, who was so desperate to be someone’s wife, she married a man she barely knew (I mean it was Kyle McLaughlin, but still).

You never expected a man to fulfil you (except you know…). When you left Richard, for the second time, you said the iconic line “I love you, but I love me more.” (S5, Ep 3) I scoffed at the time, how like you to think of only yourself. But I see now, being older and somewhat wiser. Women have always been cast in the role of caregivers, to put others’ needs above their own. Even at the expense of their heart or mental well-being. You refused to play martyr to this cause. I know now it’s one of the hardest lessons you learn as an adult; sometimes love just isn’t enough (despite what Disney tells you), and it’s better for your own sake just to walk away. You were trying to teach me and other young girls to value ourselves and seek healthy relationships. 

 Criticisms aimed at the reboot are rife with ageism. The cast looks too old now to be playing the characters. Particularly, Carrie and Charlotte’s apparently had too much filler. But in the original series, you (eventually) championed age. I am now pretty much the age the girls were when the original pilot aired, and I appreciate this. You described yourself in one episode as “forty-fucking-five!” proudly. When you had a chemical peel for Carrie’s book launch, it had some unflattering side effects (S5, Ep 5). But you were going to refuse to hide your red and peeling face, nor feel embarrassed for getting surgical enhancements which society “nearly demands” of women.

There are many aspects of SATC that don’t sit right with modern audiences. Frequently discussed is how self-involved Carrie is, even for a protagonist. Piggybacking on this criticism, I would say you are the nicest person and the best friend of all the girls. You were the only one who didn’t judge Carrie for her affair with Big and even comforted her (S3, Ep 11). You babysat Miranda’s baby despite not being comfortable around children and even gave Miranda your coveted hair stylist appointment (S5, Ep 6) just so post-partum Miranda could feel good about herself again (something none of the other girls even attempted to do). You were a bridesmaid in Charlotte’s ill-advised wedding despite Charlotte telling you she only made you a bridesmaid because she didn’t want you to “feel left out” ( S3, Ep 12).

And that’s another thing! Despite the show ultimately being about friendship, the other girls weren’t very nice to you. When you said about loving the way you look, Miranda shot “Well, you should you paid enough for it!” which is rather close to the bone even for her. There were multiple times in the series where Charlotte called you a slut either implicitly or explicitly. Carrie treated you more like a fun sideshow act for her own amusement rather than an actual friend. You were the one who used your connections to get the girls into the opening night of every hot club. You were the one who offered to be Carrie’s PR despite her admitting she couldn’t afford you. You charged her only one cocktail (S5, Ep 4). You were the one who helped Aidan choose an engagement ring more to Carrie’s taste, despite seeing the massive pitfalls in the relationship as we all did (S4, Ep 12). You were the constant support and cheerleader to your friends. The only one to encourage Carrie to go to Paris with Petrovsky when everyone else tried to dissuade her for their own selfish reasons. Promising her that “your fabulousness will translate” (S6, Ep 18). You were the friend that we all deserve and should all try to be. Pity the others didn’t seem to appreciate it, eh?

Like many fans of the original series, I have given up watching the reboot. It’s not the same without you, and I refuse to believe you would have alienated yourself from your friends over money. I prefer to imagine you living the life of a wealthy retiree on some tropical island with some chiselled eye candy. 

You were the fun one, Miss Jones. The one whose lines we all remember. There was a time when all my friends and I did was quote: “Dirty martini? Dirty bastard,d” and I’ve still never had the chance to throw a drink in someone’s face.

Wherever you are, Sam Jones, I raise my cosmopolitan (G&T) to you.

Love,

Nicole 

13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested and accused of murdering a female classmate. 

The show is only four episodes long, each one boasting a kind of one-shot take on filming style, and is based in the UK. The concepts presented are thought-provoking, and conversations are being held about the issues raised in the show in political circles all around the world, prevalent especially today in this brave new world of 2025, so make sure your alibi is airtight and let’s dive into this! 

Despite being centered around the actions of young Jamie, the show actually begins after the act has been committed, with the adults coming to arrest Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) in his home. His parents, father Eddie (Stephen Graham) and mother Manda (Christine Tremarco), and older sister Lisa (Amanda Pease), are all, of course, completely traumatised and do their best to keep Jamie calm as the arresting officers do their jobs. DI (Detective Inspector) Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) is the lead arresting officer, and while of course Jamie is provided with an advocate on the way to the station and the intake sergeant insists that Jamie needs an “appropriate adult”, for whom he of course chooses as his father Eddie, Jamie is largely treated gently but firmly by the police. Each and every action on Jamie’s intake is explained clearly and carefully, sometimes more than once, so that no officer can be accused of mistreatment, but also because Jamie has been accused of a crime that could get him charged like a full-grown adult, all the cops have to walk on eggshells and basically hold their breath just to do their job. 

The treatment of Jamie’s family by the arresting officers is called into question, but by and large, the arrest and incarceration of Jamie himself were done as by-the-book as they could possibly make it and still be mindful of a child’s sensibilities. DS (Detective Sergeant) Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) sits in with Bascombe for Jamie’s intake arrest interview, and it’s clear both officers are entirely bothered by this case and how hamstrung they are, yet still required to perform their jobs as normally as possible. Bascombe, especially, having a son around Jamie’s age, Adam (Amari Bacchus), who actually ties into the next episode, struggles trying to separate the fatherly role from the Detective requirements of his job. 

So Paulie Barlow (Mark Stanley) has been appointed as Jamie’s Solicitor (the UK version of his lawyer), Bascombe and Frank are informing Jamie that he’s been accused of killing his classmate Katie Leonard the previous night, and even producing CCTV footage that shows Jamie doing the deed. We the audience never get to see whats’ on the tape, but the mere fact of its existence is plenty damning enough. And that’s more or less where episode 1 ends. 

Episode 2 begins some three days after the murder, with Bascombe and Frank visiting Jamie’s secondary school to hunt for motives and possibly the murder weapon itself. At school, the

fellow classmates are understandably outraged, most especially Katie’s best friend Jade (Fatima Bojang), who accuses Jamie’s friend Ryan (Kaine Davis) of getting Katie killed while she’s assaulting him in her tearful rage. And it turns out that yes, Ryan is somewhat involved, at the very least because, well, the knife used in poor Katie’s murder belonged to Ryan, who apparently lent it to Jamie. Ooops. But the real clincher behind the look into potential motive comes from Bascombe’s own son Adam, who wearily informs his dad of a whole other culture amongst younglings, involving cyberbullying, secret emoji language (you wish I was kidding), and accusations of acting as incels. 

For those of you out there who might not be familiar with the whole incel culture, and it’s hard to believe that’s even an actual thing at this point but whatever we trudge on, incel stands for ‘involuntarily celibate’ and is basically an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to sexually attract women, and are actively hostile towards women because of it. That’s a very broad, generalized definition, but it is in fact the plot point of the entire show Adolescence, and please bear in mind that the lead character who did the awful deed, as we are reminded a whole bunch of times, is all of thirteen years old. 

Indeed, episode three of the show finds us seven months after the murder, back with Jamie in a juvenile detention facility, undergoing an evaluation from forensic psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) to determine his understanding of the circumstances around his particular case. As the two of them delve deep into Jamie’s toxic incel existence and discuss instances of disseminating topless photos of his female classmates, bullying over purported virginity or lack thereof, Jamie’s attitude toward women in general but especially the supposedly vulnerable Katie, Jamie’s mood fluctuates wildly between friendly, defensive, and sharply aggressive. Briony is clearly disturbed by Jamie’s responses but manages to hold it in and do her job beautifully, though the presence of a clearly capable woman doing the questioning seems like it could be a micro-agression in response to this whole poisonous incel mess. All of episode three could be considered a test, actually, everything from gauging Jamie’s response to being offered a sandwich he doesn’t like when he’s clearly hungry, to his plaintive questioning of if Ariston herself likes him after being informed this is their last session, as Jamie’s dragged away. And to my mind, at least, every single last response Jamie gave to try and explain what led up to the murder of his classmate, just isn’t good enough. Episode three of Adolescence is almost downright sickening, and that is in no small part due to the stellar acting from Cooper as Jamie. 

The final episode of our exploration of this whole mess finds us back with Jamie’s family some thirteen months after the initial murder, on Jamie’s father Eddie’s birthday, no less, a day where it seems everything that can go wrong will. Wife Manda and sister Lisa are trying desperately to just live, to work around the giant hole Jamie knife-carved into their lives, and to keep father Eddie from just exploding in his understandable rage and sorrow. Except people are still buttholes and still paint rude things on Eddie’s van, weird incel-adjacent fellows offer to help Eddie unsolicited in the hardware store, and all the Millers left free just can’t figure out how to continue without some kind of catharsis. When it finally comes and all three of the free Millers have some kind of tearful breakdown, we, the audience, can’t help but sympathize with them, of course, but I, for one, was seriously angry too. Poor sister Lisa will carry the stigma of her

brother’s actions forever, no matter where they are, as she points out to her parents, and that just totally blows chunks. But mother Manda and father Eddie, as they sit together and sob rivers of reminiscence and wonder where they went wrong in the raising of Jamie, almost the entire scene was an exercise in transference of blame, and that should not be. Jamie himself told his father that he was changing his plea to guilty, and while that’s a tiny step on the road to punishment and redemption, it’s only a single step. As Eddie, wracked with misplaced guilt grieves his sorrow onto Jamie’s teddy bear and whispers they, his parents, should have done more, we the audience are left wondering why his parents are the ones to ultimately bear the blame. Where were the school authority figures? What about the parents of the other incels and bullies in school? How did we as a society let this sort of toxic masculinity nonsense become a whole culture? (Which is likely why the show is right now being discussed in the Halls of Parliament in the UK and various places around the world, but also especially in America.) 

The one person we never hear from in the entire series is poor Katie, though it was pointed out in an interesting behind-the-scenes recently that actually, we do hear from Katie in the show, sort of. The haunting song played out at the very end of the show, a child’s choir cover of Sting’s 1987 hit ‘Fragile’, the main female voice soloing in there happens to belong to the actor who played Katie in the show, Emilia Holliday. And that, my friends, is some devastatingly brilliant directing on the part of Barantini and Stephen Graham, who played Jamie’s father Eddie and co-directed the show. 

Catch all the guilt and decide how you would disperse the blame in Adolescence, on Netflix now!

Director: Adhik Ravichandran 

Starring: Ajith Kumar, Arjun Das, Trisha, Simran

Genre: Action / Crime Drama

Rating: 4.5/5

“Good Bad Ugly” centers on Red Dragon (Ajith Kumar), a notorious gangster who chooses to surrender himself in the hopes of turning over a new leaf and reuniting with his estranged son. However, when unforeseen threats emerge, Red Dragon is forced to step back into the dangerous underworld to protect the only family he has left.

“Good Bad Ugly” plays to the strengths of Ajith Kumar, delivering a fan-pleasing portrayal of both his vintage villainy and his matured emotional depth. Ajith’s powerful screen presence, coupled with his iconic voice, shines against Arjun Das’s brooding and intense new-age antagonist, creating an electric old-school versus new-school dynamic. The nostalgic return of Simran is a clever nod to longtime fans, bringing heart and familiarity. Trisha brings a strong, grounded performance as the moral compass in Red Dragon’s life, helping move the emotional threads of the story. The film smartly balances action, comedy, and sentimental fan-service moments.

While the film delivers on fan expectations, its narrative could have benefited from tighter pacing and deeper character development for its supporting cast. Some plot conveniences and an overreliance on nostalgia may limit broader audience appeal beyond the fanbase. Certain dramatic beats felt rushed, leaving little time for emotional resonance to fully land.

The ambition to blend high-octane action with heavy emotional stakes sometimes leads to tonal inconsistencies. At moments, the shift from gritty underworld drama to lighter fan moments feels abrupt. Additionally, though Ajith Kumar’s effort to showcase his dancing skills is commendable and welcomed by fans, it slightly disrupts the otherwise darker tone the film establishes.

“Good Bad Ugly” is a tribute to Ajith Kumar’s enduring legacy, offering vintage thrills while teasing new dimensions to his craft. It’s a solid entertainer that successfully taps into fan nostalgia while hinting at an exciting evolution for AK. While not without its flaws, the film’s heart, energy, and performances make it a must-watch for fans and a compelling action-drama for broader audiences.