TBS retools 'Sex' for younger viewers

Some scenes and dialogue were reshot to remove offensive material.
TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
Maybe they will rename it "Kissing and the City."
HBO's hot-pink series, "Sex and the City," has been toned down to a pastel pink, with the randy characters seen smooching like mad but doing little else with their squeezes-of-the-month.
This took a lot of editing, but TBS, Turner Broadcasting's sitcoms-and-movies channel, wanted to pull in a wider, younger audience, as in age 14 and up.
So "Sex and the City" will be born again, a little cleaner, June 15 on TBS. The channel reaches 88 million U.S. cable subscribers.
TBS, however, doesn't want viewers to focus on the fact that the series has been scrubbed up. A fuchsia full-page ad in The New York Times purrs, "They're about to seduce a whole new audience," above a photo of our "Sex" heroines, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall, leaning lasciviously toward us.
To hear a TBS executive tell it, the edited "Sex" won't be noticeably different from the randy originals on HBO. OK, sure, Cattrall's frontal nudity has been changed to shots from her neck up.
Nixon and her date lock lips at her front door, but we don't see them go any further. And the dialogue has been TV-14-ized, said Ken Schwab, TBS' vice president of programming.
What was done
"You know we're not going to use the f-word," he said. "There are ways, in some cases, where we'd work with HBO for an appropriate alternate word inserted there." In some episodes, plenty had to be altered.
"The folks at HBO, early on, anticipated that this series might have another life. So they shot a decent amount of 'cover' footage," using angles that conceal particular body parts. When romantic partners get together on TBS, they're wearing their underwear.
The network also paid "Sex's" cast to tape new dialogue for the TV-14 rating.
The episodes are still peppery, with nipples visible through T-shirts and Cattrall's bosoms barely concealed by a pair of fireman's suspenders.
Yet Schwab believes the essence of the show is intact.
"We didn't want to edit the heart out of it, but clearly we needed to bring it into commercial television standards," he said.
But would Schwab allow his teenage daughter to watch the edited episodes of "Sex"?
He declined to answer, saying only that the show, which won Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards, is "a nice fit for where we're going directionally."
TBS is packing its program schedule with recently climaxed sitcoms, including "Friends," in prime time.
"Sex," however, will air at 10 p.m., supposedly after younger children have fallen asleep. Except it'll be summer, so kids won't be under the wet blanket of "school nights."
As anyone acquainted with preteens and teens knows, they're pretty sophisticated when it comes to television content.
About show's fans
Monique LeTourneau, 16, watched "Sex and the City" in its unedited form on DVD some years ago. "I wasn't fazed by it," she said.
She supposed her parents would prefer she not watch the show, but they do permit her to see R-rated movies, which can be more intense in terms of sex and violence.
Will "Sex's" old faithful watch the recut episodes? To find out, one must visit the women's footwear department in a fine store.
"I watched it religiously," said Linda Laverty, 24. "I probably wouldn't watch the edited ones," though. "The shock value is gone. The sex is a big part of what the show is."
The original series was honest, and dealt with topics other TV series skirted around. Edited "Sex" sounds to Laverty like just another sitcom that doesn't depict relationships realistically.
Which brings us to a question, like the clever ones Carrie used to key into her laptop: In a show about relationships, how much sex -- and sexy talk -- do we need?
Chris Simmons, 24, said "Sex" without sex is just silly. He wouldn't have watched "Sex" if his roommate hadn't forced him, but "I kind of got sucked in," and the series had its highlights. It was worth watching -- then.
But it's obvious to Simmons that edited versions would miss the point. "You don't get to see," he said, "really what the show's about."