Redemptive power

Sex, the City and Me (BBC2, Sunday) might just as well have been called ‘All Men Are Bastards — based on a true story’. Sarah Parish played Jess, a horrible person, a fund manager who is better at her job than all the men around her. She was offensive to them, offhand to her husband — a music journalist, which here signifies: ‘When men aren’t being bastards they’re so drippy they’re a waste of space anyway.’ She is rude to waitresses, which, in the simple code used in most television drama, identifies ‘truly horrible’. Then she gets pregnant, and through the redemptive power of motherhood becomes a very nice person with a clear moral purpose. However, the men at her bank, who, as I may have mentioned, are all bastards, are determined to get rid of her because they hate a successful woman, and they particularly hate a successful woman with a baby. Helped by a feminist lawyer, who manages to be feisty, steely and laidback at the same time, she decides to take the bastards on.

Now the clichés rain down on us like stair rods. There is the nice guy at the bank who had made a pass at her. Of course. That’s what men do, being bastards. But he turns out to be as spineless as a tiramisu and won’t help. The wise, lovable and brave cleaning lady, who is her only friend. The curt call from her own bank wanting to know how she’s going to clear her debts. (But her last pre-baby bonus was £550,000. Has she spent it all? I wanted to yell at the screen, ‘Look, you’re drumming up sympathy for a woman assailed by male chauvinists who is incredibly rich, but who has spent it all! Erin Brockovich had the same problem with men — bastards every one — but at least she was poor.)