It has been a long hiatus for the Emmy-winning Sex and the City, which cut short its fifth season to accommodate star Sarah Jessica Parker’s pregnancy last year. And filming stopped not a moment too soon — Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw was wearing some of the most heinous belly-camouflaging fashions ever seen in prime time, strapless sacks that made her look like she was going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Sex is about to begin its sixth (and final) season (9 p.m. Sunday, HBO). And if you think you’re over this show, do me a favor, will you? Watch the June 22 season opener and tell me you don’t feel a little flutter of happiness when you hear the familiar tropical rhythm of the theme song strike up, and you see Carrie doing her pink-tutu-clad strut, once again, down a Midtown Manhattan avenue. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

The new season’s first two sparkling episodes (there will be 20 altogether) sketch out the vicissitudes ahead for Carrie, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall). Carrie is at the hopeful and awkward beginning of a relationship with author Jack Berger (Ron Livingston). Proper Episcopalian Charlotte has fallen unexpectedly in love with bald, earthy, Jewish lawyer Harry Goldenblatt (Evan Handler) and is considering converting to Judaism. Miranda realizes that she’s in love with Steve (David Eigenberg), the father of her son, but she has pushed him away with her need to be self-sufficient.

Only Samantha seems blithely untouched by change in these opening episodes. Indeed, she’s the most Samantha-ish she has ever been; not only does she get tangled up with a hunky waiter in what may be the show’s ultimate sex montage, but she gets off (no pun intended) some of the greatest Samantha one-liners ever. Listening to Charlotte lamenting Harry’s refusal to marry her because she’s not a Jew, Samantha raises an eyebrow and drawls, " What kind of man passes up pussy for Purim? " But, according to published hints from Sex producer Michael Patrick King, the other Jimmy Choo will drop for Samantha soon, in a major way.

After five years (the show debuted in 1998), Sex and the City remains fresh and fluid. New York City is lovingly depicted in all its post-September 11 wary optimism; in the opener, there’s a breathtaking shot of a flag-draped New York Stock Exchange that encapsulates the brave, uncertain new world Carrie and Company inhabit. There are also zingy, up-to-the-minute references to such frivolities as the raw food trend ( " Like lawn in a bowl, " opines Miranda), TiVo, and that scourge of city streets, the Hummer SUV.

And, with the big 4-0 approaching for all but Samantha, the heroines keep changing, growing, learning, and hoping. What’s remarkable about Sex and the City is how fearlessly it has depicted the double-edged swords of sexual liberation and post-feminist independence. Carrie’s romantic life, for instance (she chases Mr. Right, then runs away from commitment) is a constant tug of war between embracing the freedom of one’s own space and surrendering to the instinct to snuggle up to the safe bet. Throughout the series’ run, Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha have been allowed to explore their freedom to choose, even if it meant making bad choices, like Carrie’s affair with the married Mr. Big (Chris Noth), and her own almost-marriage to the subtly manipulative " dream guy, " Aidan (John Corbett).

More important, Sex bravely tackled the ultimate " choice " issue, abortion, in the fourth season, when Miranda’s unplanned pregnancy prompted Carrie and Samantha to remember their own abortions with relief, tinged (in Carrie’s case) by wistfulness, self-doubt, and regret. In the end, Miranda exercised her right to choose and decided to have her baby. But it didn’t feel like a capitulation, it felt like the only honest portrayal a TV series has ever given us of the emotional complexity contained within the phrase " right to choose. "

Yes, the sexcapades are exciting and the writing sings and the clothes are (mostly) to die for. But more than that, Sex and the City is the definitive depiction of a period of time in women’s lives — their 30s and 40s — when all possibilities seem to stretch ahead like the city itself, surprising, frustrating, and full of wonder. Enormous changes sneak up on the show’s heroines while they’re distracted by a handsome face or a devastating pair of strappy sandals. I don’t think there has ever been a more moving scene in the series than Charlotte and Harry’s moment of mutual acceptance and accommodation in the season opener. Or a more perfectly rendered little portrait of choice and its consequences than Carrie’s accidental meet-up with Aidan on a street corner. Tender, raunchy, and wise, Sex and the City will be hard to let go when the season is over. These girlfriends have yet to wear out their welcome.

MR. BIG doesn’t make an appearance in the first couple of new Sex and the City episodes, although he reportedly will be back before the series is through. For the time being, Big’s admirers can content themselves with Chris Noth’s meaty performance as Pompey in the lush and rousing four-hour TNT miniseries Caesar (8 p.m. Sunday, June 29, and Monday, June 30, TNT). As Carrie might attest, there are worse ways to spend a couple of nights than looking at Big in a toga.

As you might have guessed, I was not in the " Aidan is the one " camp among Sex watchers. I thought his character was a self-righteous, passive-aggressive guilt tripper; he made Carrie pay and pay for cheating on him with Big. I was delighted to see Carrie dump the stiff (twice). Truthfully, I haven’t been able to warm up to any of Carrie’s beaux, the current flame-broiled Berger included, and it’s all because I’ve been spoiled by Big. Played with flirty charm and irresistible virility by Noth, Big is a man’s man, the way Carrie is a girl’s girl, and the mix is combustible and a little bit wrong, yet, in many ways, very right.

Compared to Carrie and Big’s knotty relationship complications, the intrigue of Caesar almost seems tame. Almost. Unlike Shakespeare’s play and previous movies, this Caesar begins the story with the young Julius Caesar (Jeremy Sisto, Brenda’s unstable brother Billy from Six Feet Under), a loving husband and father, chafing under the tyranny of the brutal dictator Sulla (the late Richard Harris). As Caesar’s popularity grows, so does his appetite for power, prompting the jealousy of Noth’s Pompey, his protector and mentor in public life. Caesar is a cautionary tale about the abuses of power and the gloss of politics and propaganda.

Director Uli Edel has become a master of the made-for-TV historical epic; his credits include TNT’s enthralling Mists of Avalon, the women-of-Camelot miniseries starring Julianna Margulies, Anjelica Huston, and Joan Allen, as well as the HBO movie Rasputin, for which Alan Rickman won an Emmy in the title role. And Caesar has all the elements that made those productions such crackling good entertainment — terrific acting (Sisto is a boyishly attractive and utterly commanding Caesar, while Harris regains his old loose-cannon power in his final role), richly handsome cinematography, and a piquant script by Peter Pruce (Rasputin) and Craig Warner (Mists of Avalon).

As for Noth, he seems surprisingly comfortable in ancient Rome — he has finally found a role that suits his aquiline profile. Big always did seem like a cigar-puffing, real-estate-dealing, Sinatra-singing god bestride Manhattan. He’s a guy whose spirit, personality, and will are just too, well, big for any ordinary woman to handle. Which is why he and Carrie are perfect complements for each other. She’s Venus, he’s Mars.