BANFF -- Will Sex be sweeter the second time around?
That's what two of Sex and the City's scribes are hoping for when so-called sanitized reruns of the saucy HBO hit debut tonight on TBS (i).
Executive producer Jenny Bicks says, though, that viewers who miss the bawdy dialogue too much may also miss the point.
"The show was always about the relationships, so I don't think the term 'sanitization' is applicable. If (people) didn't like the characters, they wouldn't have watched the show," Bicks says.
In other words, less-racy sex talk means more focus on the friendship between Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte.
"I read a review in the New York Times ... saying the (TBS version) actually has all the sweetness of the relationships," says producer Cindy Chupack, who was at the Banff Television Festival yesterday to teach a master class with Bicks.
At the very least, the TBS deal means millions of viewers who had never seen it can now sample Sex. "I feel like it's gotten a second life now," Bicks says.
"I became excited when I learned how many of my friends don't have HBO."
Sex and the City ended its hugely-successful run this past spring with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Palmer) and on-and-off-again boyfriend Mr. Big (Chris Noth) hooking up.
The happy ending almost didn't happen, Chupack reveals. She says the writers tossed around numerous scenarios until executive producer Michael Patrick King opted for the Big finale. (Other possibilities? She winds up alone, or with Ron Livingston's Jack Berger or even with David Duchovny's Jeremy.)
One fan so won over by the show was Chupack, who at the time was a writer on Everybody Loves Raymond.
"Raymond is a great show to work on, which is why no one leaves it ... My dad, who's an accountant, asked what I was doing going to this cable show, which meant less money, but it was really what I wanted."
Chupack certainly had the credentials, having written columns about single life for Glamour magazine.
Now, with Sex and the City off the air, both Bicks and Chupack have moved on.
Bicks is adapting Jennifer Weiner's book Good in Bed for HBO ("It isn't
about sex; the title is misleading," she adds) while Chupack, meanwhile, has just had a collection of essays, The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays, published in paperback.
It's the kind of book, not surprisingly, that Carrie Bradshaw might have penned. "I went through so many bad dates to write that, I hope I can't write another. Maybe The During Boyfriend Book would be different."
