Is ‘Uncoupled’ the Gay ‘Sex and the City’? – Vogue

In the new Netflix comedy series Uncoupled, successful Manhattan real estate broker Michael (Neil Patrick Harris) is forced to start over when his longtime partner, Colin (Tuc Watkins), wakes up one day and decides that he wants out their relationship. You could call it a midlife crisis for the both of them; Colin suddenly feels stuck in his comfortable life, while Michael must now reckon with being newly single in a city where the competitive gay dating scene favors the young, fit, and trendy. Cue the chaos!

Given the new series is backed by  Darren Star—whose Sex and the City offered us a fabulous glimpse into the sex lives of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha—Uncoupled unsurprisingly takes on a similar format. Michael is thrust into Manhattan singledom armed with his three sassy best friends: co-worker Suzanne (Tisha Campbell), actor friend Billy (Emerson Brooks), and art gallerist friend Stanley (Brooks Ashmanskas). 

But while you can sit and compare the chic foursome to Star’s SATC characters—the hilarious and scene-stealing Suzanne, for instance, is clearly the Samantha of the group—the show does attempt to rethink the “dating in Manhattan” tropes Star is the master of interrogating, and give them new life. Specifically, it makes them a lot gayer. In one episode, Michael is experimenting with taking and sending dick pics to a new love interest on Grindr—only to end up accidentally pinging a real estate client while scrolling through an apartment listing on his phone.

Photo: Netflix