'I couldn't help but wonder..." That's how it all started – the moment Carrie Bradshaw kicked off her heels, parked a Marlboro Light in an ashtray, opened her laptop and started to type that week's column for the New York Star. She wrote about her sexual and social exploits and those of her friends, while staring dreamily out the window of her apartment on 245 East 73rd Street. Women wanted to be her and men, well, they didn't really get it.

The year was 1998, and Sex and the City was at the beginning of its six- year reign. By the middle of the next decade it would be one of the most influential TV shows ever made. It made Sarah Jessica Parker (aka Carrie Bradshaw) a global superstar, and brought fame and fortune to the rest of the cast. Millions of column inches would be dedicated to analysing it, referencing it and interviewing its actors.

Sex and the City was born from writer Candace Bushnell's rather dark novel of the same name, along with her columns for the New York Observer, where Carrie Bradshaw became her alter ego, with the same initials but added promiscuity and shoes.

English-born actress Kim Cattrall played Samantha, owner of a PR company and a sexual predator, with seemingly few inhibitions, in or out of the bedroom. Kirstin Davis played Charlotte, a reserved Upper-East side princess, determined to find a husband and have a baby even if it meant converting to Judaism. Cynthia Nixon played Miranda, the career-driven, cynical lawyer who ended up committing the cardinal sin in the eyes of Manhattanites by moving to Brooklyn.

Darren Star brought Sex and the City to our screens, having previously created two other generation-defining series – Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. The executive producers were Michael Patrick King (who went on to write and direct the spin-off films) and Sarah Jessica Parker (or SJP to us.) The pitch: sex, fashion, sex, sex, friendship, wit, sex, escapism, and the all-important fifth character – New York.

Satc brought all the life, energy, joy and madness of the city into our living rooms every week. For a generation of women, a shopping trip to New York will always be linked to the show, with shops, cafés and bars where the fictional characters hung out becoming stops on Sex and the City tours.

The show was groundbreaking – it brought the brutally honest conversations of four female friends into living rooms across America and then the world (TV3 broadcast the first episode in Ireland in February 1999.)

In turn, it influenced the way women spoke about sex, because Sex and the City's success was not judged by ratings alone but by its cultural impact. It raised debates on trivial subjects – Brazilian waxing, the pros and cons of sleeping with uncircumcised men – and deeper issues like the importance of friendship.

Magazines ran which-SATC-character-are-you quizzes, cosmopolitans became many women's drink of choice, shoe designer Manolo Blahnik became a household name, women renamed their unattainable crush 'Mr Big', and Samantha made sleeping around seem cool and empowering.

And of course, there was the fashion. Thanks to stylist Patricia Field's remarkable creativity, the clothes worn by the characters, particularly Carrie, became stars in their own right. For the best part of a decade, you couldn't open a fashion magazine without seeing several references to SATC style.

Sex and the City's particular brand of feminism centred around sexual pleasure and consumerism – a lifestyle choice adopted by many viewers.

The series was also unique for the sheer unlikeability of lead character Carrie – she was selfish, self-obsessed, materialistic and at time petulant.

But the best part of the show was the writing. Snappy and bristling with energy, the one-liners were as funny as they were crude, and it was humour that became the overriding tone of the series, with the tightness of the writing makes it endlessly rewatchable.

After 94 episodes, SATC ended in 2004, only to be revived in 2008 for Sex and the City the movie, and this weekend, Sex and the City 2.

The films are solely aimed at capitalising on the viewer's lust for a further fix of Carrie and her friends and are a heightened, extra-glamourous and escapist version of the original series.

The first film grossed half a billion dollars, becoming that rare thing – an 'event movie', where diehard fans would dress up in SATC-type clothes and flock to cinemas in groups.

The second movie is even more ridiculous than the first, taking a sojourn to the Middle East and with an arduous two-and-a-half hour running time.

It's a long way from the beginnings of the HBO series, but then Sex and the City has always been about going above and beyond reality. And money, of course, because how else could you buy shoes?

Hero or Villain? Sex and the City

High: Being nominated for 50 Emmy awards.

Low: Reneging on what was apparently its core message of friendship at the end of Sex and the City 1.