Sex and the City: A dazzling entrance - but does their story have a happy ending?

SJP wore a green tulle and feather dress by Alexander McQueen and a Phillip Treacy hat. The sun shone brilliantly, and the young, almost exclusively female crowd swooned happily. The most keenly anticipated London premiere of the year did not disappoint.

The decision to launch Sex in the City: The movie across the pond had not been a popular one, at least in the US, where thousands of American fans had taken the decampment of New York's four most famous singletons as a high-profile snub.

But for the legions of British women who have devotedly followed the erotic adventures of Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, aka Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

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"I'm here for Sarah J," said Sarah Wallace, 34, who took the day off from work to come down from Stoke-on-Trent. "She's the most brilliant actress. She'll have the most fabulous shoes out of everyone tonight, Manolo Blahnik I bet."

Anne Roberts, who went to London with Ms Wallace, explained the appeal of the TV series. "There's no other programme that is so honest and so real. Women feel like they're watching themselves. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. But more than anything it makes you feel there are people out there who are experiencing what you're going through."

Crowds thronged forward in the sunshine as fans competed to catch a glimpse of the quartet outside the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square. A cavalcade of glamorous women – including a dozen amateur look-alikes – blocked one corner of the square, forcing security guards to erect extra barriers in an attempt to keep fans off the red carpet. "This is definitely the busiest premiere we've had this year," as one overworked publicist put it.

The movie reprises the tales of high fashion and heartbreak seen in the TV show of the same name, which completed its sixth and final series four years ago. Originally based on sexually frank semi-autobiographical columns written by Candace Bushnell for the New York Observer, the series quickly captivated a transatlantic generation of thirty-something women in the late 1990s. Jessica Parker, who appears in the lead role as Carrie and also co-produced the film, said the new project was two-and-a-half-years in the making and is "about forgiveness and pursuing love in a way that is real and meaningful".

Going on general release on 28 May, Sex and the City: The movie will be screened in Berlin on Thursday and in New York on 27 May. According to one fan high on adrenalin and glamour, "this is going to be the greatest movie on earth".