Netflix orders Ginny & Georgia, a show that isn’t Gilmore Girls, not at all, so why would you even ask that?
Coming soon to your Netflix queue: The story of a mother and the daughter who’s half her age, living in a quaint New England town. Mom has a past that she’s trying to distance herself from; daughter attends a school of some renown and struggles with her romantic feelings toward the local ne’er-do-well. There’s a guy who owns a restaurant, and there may be some sort of attraction between him and the mom.
Wait, isn’t this show already in your Netflix queue? Isn’t it Gilmore Girls?
Where Lorelai and Rory Gilmore lead, the streaming service that took viewers back to Stars Hollow will apparently follow, with Ginny & Georgia (or, if you prefer, “GG”), a series from creator Sarah Lampert and showrunner Debra J. Fisher that is not Gilmore Girls. Still, there are some key differences between Amy Sherman-Palladino’s breakthrough series and Ginny & Georgia, like the mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey), not coming from money, raising a son in addition to Ginny (Antonia Gentry), and living next door to a character played by a blonde actor from a beloved sitcom who’s not Sally Struthers from All In The Family. (It’s Jennifer Robertson from Schitt’s Creek.) Also, Scott Porter is there, and he had nothing to do with Gilmore Girls—just Friday Night Lights and Hart Of Dixie, two other shows with strong themes of community.
Surface similarities aside, Ginny & Georgia is unmistakably a product of the early 21st century streaming landscape and not one of turn-of-the-21st century network TV. Ginny is biracial, so Ginny & Georgia won’t be quite so glaringly white as Gilmore Girls. Nor as straight, with Degrassi alum Sara Waisglass onboard as a neighbor who has a crush on the new mom on the block. And that’s all without mentioning that our small-town restaurateur, Joe, is “granola in a manly way”—a description that would cause Luke Danes to hang up his backward baseball cap and flannel and retire to the hermit’s life he would’ve surely lived had he never poured a cup of coffee for those meddling Gilmores. (Coffee! That’s another distinction! The press release mentions kombucha, but not coffee!)
Ginny & Georgia will debut on Netflix in 2020, the same year that WarnerMedia, which owns Gilmore Girls, launches HBOMax. The A.V. Club is certain that this is just a coincidence, but we emailed Netflix about the length of its licensing agreement for the first seven seasons of Gilmore Girls just in case, and will update this story if we receive a response.