Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5129 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-09-22
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 18
• Running time: 2678 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sex and the City is based on Candace Bushnell's provocative bestselling book. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw, a self-described "sexual anthropologist," who writes "Sex and the City," a newspaper column that chronicles the state of sexual affairs of Manhattanites in this "age of un-innocence." Her "posse," including nice girl Charlotte (Kristin Davis), hard-edged Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and party girl Samantha (Kim Cattrall)--not to mention her own tumultuous love life--gives Carrie plenty of column fodder. Over the course of the first season's 12 episodes, the most prominent dramatic arc concerns Carrie, who goes from turning the tables on "toxic bachelors" by having "sex like a man" to wanting to join the ranks of "the monogamists" with the elusive Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Meanwhile, Miranda, Cynthia, and Samantha have their own dating woes.

The second season builds on the foundation of the first season with plot arcs that are both hilarious and heartfelt, taking the show from breakout hit to true pop-culture phenomenon. Relationship epiphanies coexist happily alongside farcical plots and zingy one-liners, resulting in emotionally satisfying episodes that feature the sharp kind of character-defining dialogue that seems to have disappeared from the rest of TV long ago. When last we left the NYC gals, Carrie had just broken up with a commitment-phobic Mr. Big, but fans of Noth's seductive-yet-distant rake didn't have to wait long until he was back in the picture, as he and Carrie tried to make another go of it. Their relationship evolution, from reunion to second breakup, provides the core of the second season. Among other adventures, Charlotte puzzles over whether one of her beaus was "gay-straight" or "straight-gay"; Miranda tries to date a guy who insists on having sex only in places where they might get caught; and Samantha copes with dates who range from, um, not big enough to far too big--with numerous stops in between.

The third season was the charm, as the series earned its first Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series to go along with its Golden Globes for Best Comedy Series and Best Actress (Parker). One of this season's two principal story arcs concerned hapless-in-love Charlotte and her pursuit of a husband; enter (if only...) Kyle McLachlan as the unfortunately impotent Trey. Meanwhile, Carrie has a brief but memorable fling with a politician who's golden, but not in the way she anticipated. She then sabotages her too-good-to-be-true relationship with furniture designer Aidan (John Corbett) by having an affair with Mr. Big, who himself has gotten married. Like I Love Lucy, the series benefited from a brief change of scenery with a three-episode jaunt to Los Angeles, where Carrie and company encountered, among others, Matthew McConaughey, Vince Vaughn, Hugh Hefner, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The fourth season is just as smart and sexy as ever, mixing caustic adult wit and sharply observed situation comedy on the mean streets of Manhattan, though this time the quartet of singleton city girls must endure even tougher combat in the unending war of love, sex, and shopping. Carrie finally seems to have found her ideal life partner when she is reunited with handsome craftsman Aidan. But can their relationship survive trial by cohabitation? Meanwhile Charlotte seems to have both her dream Park Avenue apartment and a solution to her marital problems with Trey. But when the subject of babies comes up, everything starts to unravel for her, too. It's not just Charlotte who has baby issues either: after what seems like an eternity of enforced sexual abstinence Miranda is horrified to discover she's pregnant. And as for the sultry Samantha, she's on a quest for monogamy, first with an exotic lesbian artist, then with a philandering businessman, with whom to her utter dismay she just might have fallen in love.

It was a short but sweet fifth season, as HBO's resident comediennes found themselves affected by forces beyond their control--the pregnancies of both Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon. A truncated shooting schedule to accommodate the actresses forced this season to be reduced to a mere eight episodes, but they and creators forged ahead, creating a handful of episodes that if short in content were long on emotion and laughs. Carrie and Miranda wrestled with their solitary lifestyles, albeit with new attachments--Miranda had new baby Brady and single motherhood, while Carrie found herself in the world of publishing as the author of a real-life book of her columns. Charlotte wondered if she'd ever find another man, while Samantha finally got rid of the one that had been vexing her far too much. If the season as a whole felt less than the sum of its parts, those parts were some of the best comedy in the show's history. The season's climactic episode, "I Love a Charade," was one of the series' best episodes ever, equally touching and funny, and grounded the show in an emotional maturity that announced that after all their wild travails, these women had truly grown up.

After a long wait--like the entire fifth season--Carrie is dating again. The sixth season starts with Carrie and her sparkly new potential, Berger (Ron Livingston), trying to leave past relationships and hit it off, with mixed results. Meanwhile Carrie's friends seem to be settling down, relatively speaking. Miranda decides that her affair with TiVo cannot compete when Mr. Perfect (Blair Underwood, at his most charming) moves into her building. Charlotte's feelings for her "opposites attract" boyfriend (Evan Handler) deepen, but they still have a few things to iron out. Most surprising is Samantha's hot relationship with waiter-actor-stud Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis) taking on something resembling love, despite Samantha's best intentions. Before the sixth season started in the summer of 2003, a bombshell hit: it was announced that this would be the finale. But it would be a long season, and these 12 episodes plant the seeds for the final 8 airing the following winter. These dozen episodes illustrate the maturity of the show: there's not a bad one in the bunch, and the show is still flat-out funny. The comedy blends serious points of how we perceive singles, couples, and parents (and the gifts we lavish on the latter two). Carrie's method of celebrating her singlehood is just another gem in this treasure of a series.

With the last eight episodes of the sixth season, HBO's grand sitcom concluded, leaving untold numbers of women--and many men--feeling deprived. The six-year series certainly did not outlast its welcome; the final season is some of the best TV had to offer in 2004. In many ways, the eight episodes served as a single finale, with all four characters approaching a kind of destiny and happiness, the theme of this last half-season (which aired weeks after the first half). Carrie continues her romance with Russian artist (Mikhail Baryshnikov), a flippantly arrogant man who's been around the block, but able to supply Carrie's needed desire for magic. Miranda has settled down with Steve (David Eigenberg), but there is more that will change with her, including her address. Charlotte continues to make baby plans now that the husband slot is filled quite nicely (Evan Handler). Going down the final stretch--and Samantha's cancer--gives the series a more serious tone, but there's always a jab to tickle the funny bone: Miranda's awkwardness with happiness, Charlotte's latest passion, Carrie typing someplace new, and Samantha getting into Paris Hilton territory. Like any series winding down, there is a wedding, a baby, old faces popping up, and some star-ladened new ones. In the final two-part episode, "An American in Paris," Carrie faces her romantic destiny, but also solidifies herself as a fashion icon, an Audrey Hepburn for 21st-century television. In the penultimate episode, she asks her friends an emotional question: "What if I never met you?" Certainly fans can ask of themselves the same question and reminisce how much better TV became since they first tuned in these four women of the City.--Donald Liebenson and Doug Thomas

Special Features
Bonus features include:
- Alternate Series Finale Endings
- Deleted Scenes
- HBO Farewell Tributes
- US Comedy Arts Festival Seminar Writers’ Panel Discussion with Sarah Jessica Parker

Language and subtitles per season:
Season 1
Languages – English, French, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles – English, Danish, Dutch, French, Norwegian, Swedish
Season 2
Languages – English, French, German, Spanish
Subtitles – English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
Season 3:
Languages – English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles – English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
Season 4
Languages - English, French, German, Italian
Subtitles – English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
Season 5
Languages – English, French, German
Subtitles – English, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
Season 6
Languages - English, French
Subtitles – English for hearing impaired, English, French, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Finnish, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Hebrew, Croat, Slovenian, Arabic, Turkish, Romanian, Serbian

Synopsis
HBO's four most fabulous Manhattanites loved nothing more than combining sex, laughs, and loves. Columnist Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her trusty friends Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), get caught up in the wild lifestyle of New York City, and do their best to balance love and life and friendship and, you guessed it, shopping. This collection includes every episode from the series' entire six-year run.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic!
Though the box is extremely irritating - it takes forever to get a DVD out due to the bizarre packaging - the contents are certainly worth the wait.
Being under the impression that I'd actually seen all of the episodes, I have been joyously surprised to discover a few that I've never seen! Yey!
I think this box set is a must for SATC fans and has certainly been making me laugh out loud (again) as I sit through each marvellous episode with a large glass of wine.
Has there ever been a greater love story than Carrie and Big? And what about the taming of Miranda? The varied attempts at the Holy Grail (Marriage) for Charlotte? And the woman with the best one-liners ever - Samantha...C U Next Tuesday... I am LOVING it....

A review of the set itself...
No-one else seems to have mentioned the quality of this particular DVD release, as opposed to say, the shoebox edition, or the Amazon Exclusive with the book.

The series DVDs themselves are a shoddy affair, with a grainy picture plaguing the first five years and none of the episodes featuring chapter points, commentaries or the like. There are also no play-all functions to be had and the menus take an age to load. The show is great but the DVDs are not.

The extras included here feature 11 minutes of deleted scenes (for SIX YEARS worth of television), 3 minute-long alternate endings for the series (all rubbish). The meat of the bonus disc comes in the form of two half-hour HBO Farewell shows, essentially clip compilations with a lot of interviews from the cast, as well as famous fans Heidi Klum, and more. Also included is a 48-minute panel session with the writers and Sarah Jessica Parker, and if you can understand a word she says as she spouts vague nonsense about, well everything really, you;ll enjoy it. The writers have more to say.

The packaging is easy enough to work and fairly pretty, but the booklet features nothing beyond episode lists. Overall, worth a buy, even though the show isn't as good as you remember it and loses its way during the middle seasons.

Good series - shame about the production quality
Anyone who watched/is watching Sex and the City on television knows what to expect from the boxed series - sharp scripts, great characters and plenty of eye-catching fashion. But some of the discs have sections where the image pixellates, and the plastic cases tend to break when the DVDs are removed. This isn't good enough for a high-priced boxed set of DVDs.