The Carrie Diaries

Posted by The TV Critic on 13 January 2013 | 0 Comments

Tags: The Carrie Diaries, Sex and the City

This certainly wasn’t for me but I’m glad I watched it and got a sense of how this prequel might work.

The good news is that the writers stayed true to the essence of Sex and the City by showing us the start of the love affair begin between Carrie and Manhattan. I thought AnnaSophia Robb did a fine job playing young Carrie. It can’t be easy to take on a roll while conscience of what the character will grow into. In a few brief moments (while encouraging friends or talking excitedly) you could glimpse the Carrie that we already know.

Apart from that though the show wasn’t particularly inspiring. Carrie’s voice overs were overwhelming, refusing to let any scene just be but offering a stifling commentary on each. The teen drama and family mourning (Carrie’s mother died shortly before the show begins) were all spelt out so thoroughly that there was nothing to become intrigued about.

It wasn’t a terrible thing to sit through but it just didn’t give me any hope that it would develop characters in an interesting way. As a paint by numbers teen drama it may find an audience though. The one thing which does give pause for thought is what exactly happens to Carrie’s father and sister (Dorrit, a name they repeated about twenty times) that in later life we never see or hear from them. I didn’t watch enough Smallville to speak with authority but I assume that show monkeyed around with Super-Man’s past to the point where no one really cared about continuity and the same could happen here. But there’s a tiny chance that this could genuinely shed light on the family back-story which might be interesting.