Cleveland is the new Miami. Betty White is the mouthy old one. Wendie Malick is the sarcastic one. Valerie Bertinelli is the sexy one. And by process of elimination, Jane Leeves must be the dumb one. It’s guesswork, but The Hollywood Reporter tells us a new pilot developed by TV Land casts these sitcom vets in what ostensibly sounds like a revamping of beloved '80s/'90s sitcom Golden Girls, which starred Betty White as Rose Nylund, the dumb one. Where Golden Girls followed the sex lives and friendship of three fiftysomethings (give it up, Blanche, you were over 50) and a post-stroke 80-year old, this show will center around three fortysomething best friends from L.A. who venture to Cleveland for reasons unknown and decide to stay because the locals think they’re SoCal. White, who at the age of 87 will be one of the oldest actresses working in television if this series is picked up, will play an “opinionated” older woman who lives in a cottage on the property of a home the three women inhabit in Cleveland.
Frasier scribe Suzanne Martin wrote the pilot, one of two original series pilots TV Land is developing for the first time. The other is Retired At 35, a comedy featuring Arrested Development’s boozing matriarch Jessica Walter, and George Segal, who previously co-starred with Malick in Just Shoot Me.