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.