In the late 1990s I shared a flat with a city lawyer obsessed with being thin and blonde, while yearning to settle down and have a baby with her ex-boyfriend. She would come home from a long day at work and watch a television series about a thin, blonde, city lawyer obsessed with settling down to have a baby with her ex-boyfriend, in a way that endorsed my friend’s every (miniskirted, backward) step.
She was not alone. Women everywhere lapped up Ally McBeal, airing on Channel 4 from 1997-2002, in the same way that they lapped up their newly fashionable caffe lattes.
The show was created by the former attorney David E Kelley. Calista Flockhart starred as its titular heroine, a lawyer working in
