this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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Television

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Finished my first watch of "The Golden Girls" and loved it. Someone recommended "Hot in Cleveland" as its spiritual successor, and they weren't wrong. (startrek.website)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by IcedRaktajino@startrek.website to c/television@piefed.social
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After TGG, I started on "Empty Nest" since it was a spin off and I vaguely remember it as kind of background noise from my childhood. Ended up pausing that to check out "Hot in Cleveland" after someone mentioned to me it was basically a modern version of TGG.

It's not a 1:1 remake, and possibly not what the showrunners were originally going for, but there are a lot of overlaps in the premises:

  1. Four women over 50 (with the exception of Jane Leeves in season 1 who was 49 at the time) living in the same house as roommates/friends/heterosexual life partners.
  2. Lots of talking around the kitchen table
  3. Betty White (who basically plays the Sophia in this version)
  4. The characters are roughly analogous to their unofficial TGG counterparts:
    • Elka (Betty White): Basically Sophia who knows how to use the internet. Imagine Sophia but as a Twitter troll.
    • Joy (Jane Leeves): The sharp-witted, sarcastic "straight man" acting as the Dorothy
    • Victoria (Wendie Malick): The fading starlet / soap opera actress taking up the reins as the Blanche of the group. She also has a lot of echoes of Nina Van Horn from "Just Shoot Me" (also played by Malick)
    • Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli): The bubbly/naive "mom" type acting as the Rose. This is probably the weakest comparison, but it's definitely there.
  5. Several episodes are pseudo clip shows where they're sitting around the table telling stories with the episode being made up of those flashbacks (a frequent framing device used in TGG)
  6. There's a few behind-the-scenes episodes that were part of the actual broadcast which take the place of TGG's clip shows.
  7. Lots of plots revolve around the interaction/combination of the 4 familiar character types.

It's also a bit of a running "Frasier" reunion since Leeves and Malick were both cast members. "Frasier" alums I've noticed so far are Peri Gilpen (Roz), John Mahoney (Martin), Millicent Martin (Gertrude Moon), Tom McGowan (Kenny), and Jean Smart (Lana "PUT YOUR BROTHER ON THE PHONE!" Gardner).

If you liked TGG and haven't seen this, I can confirm it's accurate to call it a spiritual successor and recommend checking it out.

Edits:

  1. Elga -> Elka. I misheard the character's name and misspelled it.
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[–] agentTeiko@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

We just want to help, Carol