The Sex and the City author on what it would have been like if it was set in 2017

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20 years have passed since Candace Bushell's collected Sex and the City columns were published, and the dating landscape of New York City and other metropoles looks very different.

To mark the anniversary, The Guardian interviewed the author (read it in full here), who provided a retrospective on its success, looked at how the lives of 30-somethings have changed and revealed that in real life Carrie wouldn't have ended up with Big.

Here are the takeaways on what the HBO adaptation would have been like had it taken place today:

On Carrie's column:

"I suppose it would be on some kind of blog, and people would be responding with their own stories. But back then the Observer had an audience, a very specific one, and we were just trying to reach that audience. Whereas today, everybody wants to appeal to everybody."

On addressing politics:

"I actually think the characters would be involved in politics in some way. I think Miranda would probably be marching for human rights and the show would address it in a bigger way. But at the time, in 1998, everything was on a big upturn."

On the proliferation of dating apps:

"When I talk to girls in their early 20s some say, “What’s a date like?” Twenty years ago, you had to go on dates. But Tinder has pushed us up against a very harsh reality and I think younger people see themselves as commodities in the dating world."

Of course, we kind of do know what Sex and the City would look like in the millennial era: Girls. Creator Lena Dunham has repeatedly stated that the show would never have existed were it not for its HBO forebear.