Golden Years (miniseries)

This article is about the miniseries. For the episode, see Golden Years (Comedy Lab).

Golden Years (also referred to as Stephen King's Golden Years) is an American television science fiction thriller miniseries that aired in seven parts on CBS from July 16 to August 22, 1991 as a part of its 1991 schedule.

Golden Years
Title card
Also known as	Stephen King's Golden Years
Genre	Science fiction Thriller
Created by	Stephen King
Developed by	Josef Anderson
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 Ed Lauter R. D. Call Bill Raymond
Theme music composer	David Bowie
Opening theme	"Golden Years"
Ending theme	"If You Won't Leave Me, I'll Find Somebody Who Will"
Composer	Joe Taylor
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7
Production
Executive producers	Stephen King Richard P. Rubinstein
Producers	Mitchell Galin Peter R. McIntosh
Cinematography	Alex Nepomniaschy
Editors	Michael Kewley Stephen Mark Richard Harkness
Camera setup	Joe D'Alessandro
Running time	232 minutes 236 minutes (Home video)
Production company	Laurel Productions
Original release
Network	CBS
Release	July 16 (1991-07-16) – August 22, 1991 (1991-08-22)

Plot

Harlan Williams, an elderly janitor, is caught up in an explosion at the top-secret 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

All episodes

• Keith Szarabajka as Harlan Williams
• Felicity Huffman as Terry Spann
• Frances Sternhagen as Gina Williams
• Ed Lauter as Gen. Louis Crewes
• R. D. Call as Jude Andrews
• Bill Raymond as Dr. Richard X. Toddhunter

Six or fewer appearances

• Stephen Root as Maj. Moreland
• Philip Lenkowsky as Billy Delois
• Tim Guinee as Fredericks
• Graham Paul as Rick Haverford
• Erik King as Burton
• John Rothman as Dr. Ackerman
• Harriet Sansom Harris as Francie Williams
• Matt Malloy as Redding
• Margo Martindale as Thelma
• Stephen King (cameo/episode 5) as a bus driver^[1]

Production

King called Golden Years a "novel for television"; it originated as an idea for a novel that sat in his notebook for years.^[1] He "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 intended 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 was never realized. King asked for four hours of airtime in the following spring to finish the story, but CBS denied him this as well.^[2] The home video version changes the last few minutes of the final episode to give the story an optimistic ending.