TOMORROW, HBO’S BEHEMOTH spin-off And Just Like That returns to Sky for a third season. The Sex and the City offshoot has received decidedly mixed reviews, especially when compared to its predecessor, and yet continues to thrive due to a mix of nostalgia, fondness and glimmers of greatness in otherwise stodgy episodes.

Many millennial women like me will keep watching Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and their pals because, well, we love them. It doesn’t matter if the writing is clunky or the characters’ motivations are mind-boggling.

These are the women we came of age with, and it’s a treat and joy to see them in this later stage of their lives with a whole new set of problems, love interests and trends to deal with.

There’s a particular affection that comes with revisiting cultural moments that had a profound effect on us as young people. For my generation, that was Carrie and co, but also Monica, Phoebe and Rachel, Will & Grace and The Spice Girls, because in the 90s and 00s it was friendship that was cooler than anything else. Romance was complicated, sex even more so, but BFFs? Well, they were forever.

And despite Samantha Jones not returning to the series full-time (due to an alleged spat between actors Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker) And Just Like That is proof that despite the mess along the way, sometimes the most enduring relationships we have are platonic ones with other women.

Magic of the 90s

As an only child in the early 90s, I became particularly fascinated by the friendships I witnessed on screen.

My earliest memories of movies involve watching Beaches on video every Saturday with my cousin. The weepy melodrama starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey is the story of two women who meet as little girls, form a long-distance pen pal friendship and as adults, an opposites-attract dynamic as intense and important as any of their relationships with men – more so, even. It was a good lesson for a child to learn that nurturing close ties with other women was important, and one I would be exposed to on screen over and over again throughout my life.

Thus, it’s perhaps no surprise that female friendship is the key theme of my second novel, Long Story, published today by Penguin Sandycove.

Tara and Alex met at stage school in Dublin as tweens, and now, as adults, live wildly different lives – the former is a famous actress, the latter a journalist. They’ve been a constant for one another through highs and lows, but the publication of a memoir by a man they’ve both known throws a spanner in the works of their friendship at perhaps the worst time possible. Two best friends, one old flame, well… it’s a long story.

My heroines aren’t girls, like the 20-somethings depicted in Lena Dunham’s seminal mid-noughties series. They’re not wannabes like Romy and Michele at their infamous High School Reunion, or ingenues like Benny and Eve in Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends.

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Alex and Tara are elder millennials and dealing with loss, marriage breakdowns, stepchildren and loneliness. If anything, their troubles are closer to the well-worn Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, or the iconic Thelma and Louise (albeit without the murder or dramatic suicide pact).

For me, it’s refreshing to revel in the ups and downs of midlife pals and a reminder that life and love still have the power to thrill and dismay us at any age. As much as I adore and appreciate the Derry Girls and their teenage shenanigans, I certainly relate more on the cusp of forty to the trio from The First Wives Club.

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My own favourite Irish novel of 2025 so far is Patricia Scanlan’s City Girls Forever, in which we revisit Devlin, Maggie and Caroline from the author’s renowned City Girl trilogy 30 years later.

Long may it last, this sharing of older women’s stories. And if Carrie Bradshaw could glamorise menopause and maybe display a HRT patch while she’s tottering around in her five-inch heels, well, that would be great too.

Vicki Notaro is a best-selling author and podcast host. Her new book, ‘Long Story’, is published by Sandycove, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available in stores and online from 29 May.