And just like that, Sex and the City gals hit their 50s and it's sink or swim for Succession

He could see something glinting in the water, something of ineffable importance, but the cloudy picture would disassemble before he, or I, could learn what it was.

For months at a time, I'd forget this scene from some unknown movie or TV show and get on with my life; then, it would return, as I brushed my teeth, rode the school bus, swam laps at the town baths.

It was a nano-second mystery I assumed would never be solved. I'd never discover the origin of the scene nor what was in that pond because, simply, I had no way of finding out.

Back then, where would you even start? We had no Delphic IMD, no Batcomputer; there was no internet.

These days, such orphan clues can be left on the steps of online forums populated by a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters (or a thousand geeks sitting at a thousand laptops) and they will quickly extrapolate to which film or show the scene belongs while simultaneously crowing of their pop culture prowess in the face of your own rank amateurism.

Engaging the services of such a group is an unpleasant experience and fraternising with these undesirables, as if going to the mafia, can only lead to trouble.

Now, we ask that you do a favour for us ...

Eek.

Thankfully, I never had to stoop so low to solve The Mystery of the Shiny Thing at the Bottom of the Pond.

Somewhere around 16, I rented a VHS copy of Roman Polanski's Chinatown and there the scene was, right before my eyes.

The man was Jack Nicholson's gumshoe Jake Gittes. The pond in which he was peering had been used to drown a Los Angeles engineer and the glinting object turned out to be a pair of spectacles belonging to the deceased.

I can only deduce somewhere during that glorious, negligent period before parental locks, I'd watched Chinatown as a kid and, for a good decade or so, that specific scene had lodged somewhere in my subconscious.

Case closed.

Being nagged by such out-of-context intrusions from our film and TV history is not uncommon. We all have flashbacks (I'm still haunted by creepy snippets of '70s British series The Tomorrow People and The Black Arrow) of various creative enterprises but just because we might have memories of a show doesn't make that show truly "memorable".

For this to be so, those splinters must not only nestle in our own minds, they must enter the collective psyche itself; inform the zeitgeist.

Sex and the City is already one such product and, should it ever resonate beyond the critics, HBO stablemate Succession may yet be deemed another.

Putting its pair of deplorable spin-off movies to one side, SATC continues to be adored by old fans and discovered by new ones, so this lucrative popularity has been parlayed into a reboot, And Just Like That, streaming in Australia on Foxtel and Binge from December 9.

Based on the book of the same name by Candace Bushnell, the original SATC created by Darren Star screened between 1998 and 2004. The narration of columnist Carrie Bradshaw forms our Siri/Alexa-type guide though New York as we follow Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her three friends as they traverse the highs and lows of work, life and love.

When we meet them, Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are in their early 30s, while, rounding out the quartet, Samantha (Kim Cattrall), is almost a decade older. Samantha is brasher, ballsier, more sexually aggressive and experienced than, not only her younger girlfriends, but many of the men in her life. Given this, the fact Samantha won't be in the reboot will be a test of fan loyalty, although the opportunity to reconnect with the remaining three, now - tantalisingly enough - in their 50s, should paper over this unfortunate omission (fuelled by a real-life spat between Parker and Cattrall).

SATC was by no means perfect. It wasn't as clever as Seinfeld or goofily endearing as Friends and its female-focused lens attracted plenty of trolls (Brian Griffin from Family Guy wondered if it wasn't a show "about three hookers and their mum?").

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But Sex and the City was memorable because it did inform the zeitgeist, it was a cultural force (much to the delight of high-end cobbler Manolo Blahnik) and it did say something to women. While the lion's share of this impact was attributed to the Sex component of the title, it could be argued the more nourishing aspect was always the City bit.

Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and That Girl decades before it, SATC is about single ladies taking on the male-dominated big smoke; a Diedre and Goliath battle in which young professional women around the planet continue to engage every day.

As the ledger recording those victories across career and personal life finally begins to tip towards the black, those women who not only survived, but thrived in the city, often look around to find it was their female support team which got them to the summit.

And there can no better vantage from which to drink in all that success than one's insouciant 50s.

Sadly, poor old Kendall Roy may never reach that ripe old age.

Humiliated at his own 40th birthday and now staring corporate defeat in the face of his "evil" father, our sad-sack scion's run for titanic ascendancy in Jesse Armstrong's Succession appears to have hit a dead-end in the deep end.

As the season three finale streams from Monday on Foxtel and Binge, we'll discover if freshly shorn and chastened Ken (Jeremy Armstrong) came to a similar aquatic swan song as that LA engineer in Chinatown or that caterer Kendall let drown all the way back in season one.

And while we take this as an opportunity to ponder pool safety this summer (beer and lilos, a dangerous mix), we should also consider Succession's place in TV history.

Is it as good as it thinks it is?

Or, as Carrie Bradshaw might put it, is Succession truly memorable?

Well, yes it is, but, at the risk of over-quoting Family Guy, sometimes it feels as though Succession "insists upon itself".

While the unsophisticated masses flock to streaming hits such as Yellowstone and Squid Game, Succession has been a darling among critics but not so with the wider viewing audience.

There's no denying the show is smart, churning out the best Sorkinese this side of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but Succession can also be guilty of getting bogged down in its own brilliance.

Season three has been a case in point.

For the past eight weeks, we've had a lot of sibilant sibs circling each other but the ouroboric machinations of the Roy clan have been to the detriment of the show's plot.

Like a shark, Succession is austere, cold-blooded, savage and quite majestic.

Also like a shark, Succession must keep moving to stay alive and it would be a pity if such a great show drowned itself in a sea of narcissism before taking its place in the pop culture pantheon.

Memorable as that might be.