Television is a loyal and devoted friend. If it finds you like something – let’s say the TV equivalent of a chocolate eclair – it will keep feeding you more and more sticky cakes of varying quality, until you finally throw your hands in the air and scream: “Enough with the fake cream and soggy pastry – give me a steak or I’ll shoot!”

But you shouldn’t shout at poor old television. It just wants you to pay it some attention. And it isn’t big on imagination – so, if it feels you’ve found something better to do, it will keep offering you those eclairs in the hope that you’ll come on back one day.

Take this autumn’s traditional blizzard of new programming over in America, currently at the pilot stage. The US networks have spent the past two years mourning the departure of their favourite eclair, Sex and the City. Over the course of six seasons, the show was nominated for more than 50 Emmys and watched in more than 50 countries. What made it very special, however, was its numbers. In 1998, its first season, Sex and the City was one of the highest rated sitcoms of the year, while its final episode, in 2004, was the 10th most watched sitcom finale in US television history – behind Seinfeld, Friends and Cheers. What’s astonishing about that is that Sex and the City was on HBO, a subscription cable channel.

When Sex and the City left, it took female viewers with it, and not just any old female viewers. It briefly threatened to hit ratings for the most important female viewers in America: the thirtysomething women. “The baby boomer generation got power, but advertisers really want the boomers’ daughters,” says Professor Tina Pieraccini, a broadcasting expert at the State University of New York. “They’re in their twenties and thirties, have careers and can spend lots of money.

“Women have more purchasing power than ever before, head 40% of US households, make 85% of purchasing decisions and run 40% of US companies. Their economic clout can only get stronger.”

At the same time, she explains, young men are switching off. Viewing by 18-to 24-year-old males has fallen by at least 12% as the chaps turn to DVDs and video games. Women now make up more than half of all primetime viewers and watch four hours more TV a week than men.

So, the shows debuting this month in America, preparing for autumn runs, read pretty much like pitches for . . . well, you be the judge. Take Lipstick Jungle, which stars Brooke Shields as Wendy and Kim Raver as Nico.

The production notes read: “Based on the bestselling book by Candace Bushnell, this enticing new dramedy follows three high-powered friends as they weather the ups and downs of lives lived at the top of their game. Nico, editor-in-chief of a hot fashion magazine, has her eye on becoming CEO. Movie exec Wendy does everything she can to balance career and family. And free-spirited designer Victory longs to make her dreams come true, and maybe find Mr Right along the way. Armed with humour and strength, these three modern New York women support one another through the triumphs and tears that are all part of making it big in The Big Apple.” Heard anything like that before?

Or try ABC’s Cashmere Mafia, in which Zoe Burden, Wall Street phenomenon, juggles her career in investment banking with having two children. Whenever she can, she takes time out to gossip with her best friends – Juliet Draper, hotel mogul; Dylan Mason, publishing tycoon, and Caitlin Dowd, cosmetics giant. Or how about The Women’s Murder Club (tag line: CSI meets Sex and the City), or The Mastersons of Manhattan (tag line: Dallas meets Sex and the City), or Nurses (tag line: ER meets Sex and the City), or Gossip Girl (tag line: Barely Legal meets Sex and the City)?

Some avenues remain sadly unexplored. Nobody has yet pitched South Park meets Sex and the City, but Alien meets Sex and the City can’t be too far away, as a fast-growing subgenre of these female buddy series is the Tough Woman show. So we have the former EastEnder Michelle Ryan as the unlikely star of the reworked Bionic Woman – instead of focusing on terrorism and militarism, NBC says, its new cyberheroine “will explore the role of professional women in contemporary society and how they juggle their various roles”.

Strong female characters are bursting through the scenery. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an everyday story of a single mother raising a 14-year-old boy whom she has to protect from robots (ie, Terminators) to ensure he can save the world. In Judy’s Got a Gun, “a suburban woman balances being a single mother with investigating bizarre suburban crimes”. And in Blood Ties, a supernatural thriller, Christina Cox stars as a cop turned private sleuth with a degenerative eye disorder. She teams up with a 450-year-old vampire who happens to be the bastard son of Henry VIII. Crikey.

There is oestrogen in the water over here, too. Big-budget dramas for the autumn include a feminised version of Frankenstein, with the good doctor played by Helen McCrory as a stem-cell researcher trying to save her dying child (Sex and the City meets shocks). ITV also has Lost in Austen, a Life on Mars-style otherworld adventure in which a Jane Austen fan finds herself in Pride and Prejudice, while Lizzie Bennet turns up in our world (Sex and the City meets frocks). In Mistresses, on BBC1, four good female friends from Scotland manage their illicit love lives (Sex and the City meets jocks). Even überbloke Philip Glenister faces his feminine side in the Life on Mars sequel Ashes to Ashes, in which a female officer drops through the time tunnel into the 1980s (Sex and the City meets, um, cops).

“The future looks set to continue in this vein,” says James Kirkham, of the media agency Holler. “Channel 4’s Shameless had a classic 50:50 split in audience, although the chaotic, often violently funny subject matter seemed more appealing to men. It was the key female characters who brought in the women viewers. Likewise, E4’s teenage drama Skins featured several strong, independent women in lead roles, meaning a whole new generation of female viewers will grow up expecting to see strong women leading the cast.”

This autumn sees the final outing here for The Sopranos, one-time channel-mate to Sex and the City. As Tony Soprano blazes off into the sunset, with his strip bars, drug cartels and big guns in tow, there are no more gangster series in development in the USA.

Wave him goodbye with a tear in your eye, chaps.

You’re unlikely to see anything like him for a while.

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