Golden Years (miniseries)

This article is about the 1991 American miniseries. For the 1998 UK comedy, see Golden Years (TV programme).
Golden Years
Also known as Stephen King's Golden Years
Genre Thriller
Written by Stephen King
Josef Anderson
Directed by Kenneth Fink (1)
Allen Coulter (2,4,6)
Michael Gornick (3,7)
Stephen Tolkin (5)
Starring Keith Szarabajka
Felicity Huffman
Frances Sternhagen
Theme music composer David Bowie
Opening theme "Golden Years"
Country of origin  United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 7
Production
Running time 40 minutes
Production company(s) Laurel Productions
Broadcast
Original channel CBS
Original run 16 July 1991 – 22 August 1991

Golden Years (also referred as Stephen King's Golden Years) is an American television miniseries that aired in seven parts on CBS in 1991.

Production

King called Golden Years a "novel for television"; it originated as an idea for a novel that sat in King's notebook for years.[1] King "wrote the first five episodes and outlined the last two."[1] King credited Twin Peaks for making it possible for Golden Years to be produced:[1]

"Up until Twin Peaks came on, the only sort of continuing drama that TV understood was soap opera, Dallas, Knots Landing, that sort of thing. To some degree David Lynch gave them that. But he turned the whole idea of that continuing soap opera inside out like a sock. If you think of Twin Peaks as a man, it's a man in delirium, a man spouting stream-of-consciousness stuff. Golden Years is like Twin Peaks without the delirium."

The miniseries was to lead into a regular series, and therefore ended on a cliffhanger. CBS, however, decided not to pick up the option on the full series, and it never realized. King asked for four hours of airtime in the following spring to finish the story, but CBS denied him this.[2] The home video version changes the last few minutes of the final aired episode to give the story an optimistic ending.

Plot

An elderly janitor named Harlan Williams (Szarabajka) is caught up in an explosion at the laboratory where he works. After surviving but discovering he is now "aging" in reverse, he ends up on the run from an operative of "The Shop".

Cast

The series stars Keith Szarabajka, Felicity Huffman, and Frances Sternhagen;[1] the cast also included Ed Lauter, R. D. Call, Bill Raymond, and Matt Malloy.

In the fifth episode, Stephen King has an extended cameo as a bus driver.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Applebome, Peter (July 14, 1991). "TV Gets a New Poltergeist: Stephen King". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-05-23.
  2. ↑ Albert Rolls. Stephen King: A Biography. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 100. Retrieved 26 October 2014.

External links