Reader, don't marry him

Part of the programme's early success was owed to the way - in a world dominated by happily-ever-afters and Reader, I married hims - it offered a snubnosed defence of people who live on their own and have a darned good time with it. But in this fifth and penultimate series, the four single female characters, of whom the writers once seemed so fond, have been depicted as not so much joyous as desperate and downright masochistic.

If you're not shacked up by the grand old age of 35, the series concludes on Wednesday (and I don't think I'm giving anything away here), you have two choices: become a desperate nymphomaniac or a sexless, friendless single earth mother who hangs out at Weight Watchers. Mwah!

How timely SATC is. Never mind corsages, cosmopolitans or Chanel, this season it's all about anti-singles conservatism (and yes, all you single boys out there, this trend applies to you too).

Last month, newspapers eagerly published results of a new study which claimed that people who live on their own pose "one of the greatest challenges for conservation we face today", because they buy two sets of electrical appliances instead of sharing one, have such a strong effect on the ecosystem that the bald eagle and giant panda are at risk of extinction and keep Gabrielle in the pop charts. (OK, I made that last bit up, but the warning about the animals was, hand on heart, actually sounded.) Property prices are so high, we are told, because single people hog apartments all for themselves.

Single people suffer "massive amounts of loneliness" (Evening Standard) and spent New Year's Eve "slump[ed] in the corner feeling like failures" (Mirror). Grumpier non-breeders than myself might suggest that much of the media's antipathy towards single home-dwellers comes from journalists in a huff because they have to finish their article in a rush to make the school run on time.

Single people just don't get good PR. From fairytales to chicklit novels, the happy ending is the marriage ending and any other is viewed as a human tragedy, a waste of life. Which seems odd considering that their numbers are growing, and so are, one would think, a canny market to charm and tap. According to Datamonitor, by 2005 there will be almost 2 million fewer nuclear families than there are today and 1 million more single people. People are also likely to continue to delay marriage and having children.

Yet the outdated moulds persist. Limpid romantic comedies invariably end with a wedding, no matter how implausible. Only wacky characters live on their own in television programmes (Phoebe in Friends, Kramer in Seinfeld, Ally McBeal), because only a wacky person would choose that life. It now seems that the previous series of SATC were so optimistic because they worked under the assumption that the women would eventually find love. But now that the end of the series is in sight, and such an ending remains elusive, the show has become depressed with the characters.

To choose to live on your own is, now more than ever, a very costly decision, yet increasing numbers are choosing to do so. Fifty per cent of new home buyers in London are single - twice as many as 20 years ago. Thus, we can only assume that people do so because they really want to, not because they inhaled so much smoke from their Jo Malone scented candles that they simply forgot to consider any other option. Is there not something heartening in that increasing numbers of people are feeling sufficiently confident to go it alone? Doesn't that say something positive about the evolution of the human race?

Nobody wants to be lonely, and true love is a wonderful thing, but more and more people are finding that other things are wonderful, too, such as self-sufficiency, independence and not twisting ourselves in knots straining to hear the ticking of our biological clocks. There are other endings than the meringue dress. Films such as Muriel's Wedding and My Best Friend's Wedding both conclude with the heroines leaving their dull leading men and driving off with their more personality-laden friends.