A Golden Age of TV

5 minute read

The Golden Girls is making a comeback. From July you can watch every episode on Disney Plus and what an absolutely binge-worthy treat that will be. I grew up on the Golden Girls, it was one of those shows that always seemed to be playing on some station and I saw Rose, Blanche, Sophia and Dorothy as my TV aunties. I knew it was funny, though lots went over my head, and there were some obvious laughs but having watched it again in recent years I have realised just how completely ground-breaking a show it truly was.

First and foremost, it was a programme about how to keep going. In the mid-90s, when the show first aired, there wasn’t a lot of conversation around what happened when you were divorced, widowed or just living alone as a woman. There was even less discussion of it in Ireland. But here were four women, thrown together by circumstance, choosing to live, love and support one another. It was a commentary about the importance of female friendship and how having a chosen family can be as important, or sometimes more so, than the one you’re born into.

It was also one of the very first times that women over 50 were portrayed as fun, vital and sexy on television. It took ‘til the mid-80s for TV executives to accept that we don’t just wake up reaching for a Zimmer frame on our 50th birthdays.

Susan Harris was the creator of the Golden Girls and she spoke to the New York Times shortly after the show’s premiere in 1985 saying: “Television is always several steps behind life. When do you see passionate older people on television? There is life after 50. People can be attractive, energetic, have romances. When do you see people of this age in bed together? Eventually, on this show, you will. It’s kind of pathetic that this show is television’s baby steps.’’

It was a big deal in 1985 and 36 years later not a whole lot has changed. There hasn’t been much in the intervening years to match what the Golden Girls did for the perception of women over 50 on TV.

In her book Aging with Dignity, activist Ai-jen Poo speaks about the impact the show had on the portrayal of aging women on TV. “Probably the single most effective product to come out of Hollywood in terms of turning around the cultural stereotypes about older women was the hugely popular and successful television show The Golden Girls in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those four women, each with her own distinct history and personality…shattered the silence and the invisibility around aging in the most hilarious and endearing ways.”

But aging wasn’t the only prejudice that the show dealt with. All the big taboo topics were covered. Humour goes along way when you’re trying to get people to change their minds or listen more openly to an issue and the Golden Girls were at the forefront of TV activism. They had episodes that dealt with gay marriage and with the Aids epidemic that was sweeping the US. There were storylines featuring disability in ways that didn’t reduce the subject to pity and stereotypes. They tackled race when it was still something very much swept under the carpet and they spoke about women and aging in ways that had never been seen before.

In the episode, Rose Fights Back, Rose has been cut off from her dead husband’s pension plan and must find employment and a way to support herself. She’s pretty quickly hit with agism and realises that it’s going to be harder than she thought to find a job. In a really sad scene, she talks about seeing an older woman rooting through rubbish. “I wondered, what did she do to get herself into a fix like that? I thought, well, she must be lazy, or she must be pretty stupid to let something like this happen to her. The truth is: she’s me.”

But there were laughs too and the jokes hold up, because the way women speak to each other is universal. Openly mocking Dorothy’s hideous wardrobe while trying to help her could be any of us. Slagging off Blanche’s many romantic partners sounds like a conversation your mates are having at brunch. Gently mocking Rose’s sheltered life is straight out of the meeting up with your schoolfriends playbook.

It’s everything you really want TV about four women to be about. It’s the far, far better version of Sex and the City. When you hear the Bold Type being praised for taking on difficult topics I scream – but the Golden Girls did that first and they did it 36 years ago!

It’s a classic, it’s an icon of TV and it’s a crying shame that it still stands out as some of the bravest TV about women we’ve seen. Why have so few TV shows taken the mantle? Why do we not see older women having a ball, or female friendships that are gas but also supportive?

If you’re asking me which SATC character I am, I’m going to tell you that I’m Dorothy, with a touch of Blanche and a dash of Sophia. You can keep your Charlotte and your Miranda. You can absolutely keep your Carrie (though I’ll have all the Parisian outfits please). If I’m going to choose an icon of TV female friendship I’m going golden and you should too.

Jennifer Stevens, June 2021