If you’ve reached the end of your latest binge of The Golden Girls, you will soon be able to keep the party going by streaming every episode of the short-lived spinoff series. Dubbed The Golden Palace, the spinoff aired for just one season following the conclusion of The Golden Girls, and because it hasn’t been available for streaming, it’s largely been forgotten. That changes next month as Hulu announced that The Golden Palace starts streaming in January.
The Golden Palace picks up directly after the series finale of The Golden Girls, which saw Bea Arthur getting married and moving away from her mother and best pals. When the series ended, The Golden Girls was one of television’s most popular programs, and the hope was to keep fans watching by bringing back the rest of the remaining cast. Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty all returned to their respective roles as Rose Nylund, Blanche Devereaux, and Sophia Petrillo.
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In the spinoff, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia move out of their shared Miami home and into the Art Deco hotel in South Beach, which they plan to manage. With Arther out of the picture, Don Cheadle was brought in to play hotel manager Roland Wilson with Cheech Marin also co-starring as co-chef Chuy Castillos. With such a solid cast, the potential for The Golden Palace to do well seemed like it was there, but fans found that it just wasn’t the same in a new location without the constant presence of Dorothy Zbornak (though Bea Arthur did make a special appearance). CBS ultimately canceled the spinoff after a 24-episode single season.
“It sounded like a marvelous idea,” Betty White said of the spinoff in a 1997 interview, per Archive of American Television. “These cloistered women who’d been living in their nest, in their house, sell the house because Dorothy gets married. They buy a hotel in Florida, one of these art deco modern hotels. And they have to get out of that sequestered situation and face life as it comes in off the street, through the lobby of the hotel. It’s a whole new world for them, which would be interesting.”
She added, “Problem was, we had the same writers. And if a script began to not fall together, they’d give one or other of us a monologue and pretty soon we were doing Golden Girls in the lobby. And I think that’s why we only went a year. It was too much trying to do the same old Golden Girls without the balance of the show. The idea was sound, but the writers weren’t ready for it.”
The Golden Palace hits Hulu exactly one week before one of its stars becomes a centenarian. Betty White turns 100 years young on Jan. 17, and in honor of the occasion, a celebration of her life and career will be screening in theaters on that day through Fathom Events. Fans of White will certainly have a lot of material to check out come January.
To watch The Golden Palace, look for the show to start streaming on Jan. 10, 2002, on Hulu. In the meantime, you can watch the classic episodes of The Golden Girls on the streaming service.
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Jeremy Dick
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