The Girls are Back
Hot in Cleveland’s cast could attract a gay audience

It’s been a long time since a show about a group of women — like The Golden Girls or Designing Women — achieved a huge gay following, but it’s possible that the torch has been handed off with Hot in Cleveland.

Wisecracking experienced women are iconic, and a new stream of bitchy, pithy, intelligent and well-delivered sarcasm is long overdue. Television viewers have earned an alternative to The Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New York.

Lovers of good sit-com may have caught a break with TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland, which follows three hotties from LA and the crusty funny Betty White as they whoop it up in Cleveland.

A huge number of sitcoms fail, but Hot in Cleveland is an example of how networks can get it right and craft a perfect alignment of cast, plot, writing and mass appeal.

Since my partner and I purchased a lakeside condo in Cleveland five years ago, I may be biased about the show’s locale. But the June 16 premiere had all the elements necessary for a hit.

The show introduced three friends from Los Angeles, flying to Paris for some long overdue R & R. Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli) is a successful novelist, Joy (Jane Leeves of Frasier) is an eyebrow stylist to the stars, and Victoria (Wendie Malick of Just Shoot Me) is a “mature” soap star clinging to her youth by a fingernail.

En route, the plane makes an emergency landing in Cleveland. Imagine the horror as three sophisticated Los Angeles fashion casualties are informed of a forced layover in “the mistake by the lake.”

It’s a great opener and the actresses slipped comfortably into roles that are so funny and believable that I dare you not to laugh out loud at least once.

And then there’s Betty White. It seems like she’s has never seen a role she didn’t like or couldn’t nail. Cast as the pot-smoking caretaker of a beautiful property that Bertinelli decides to rent, it’s evident that White’s going to be the conduit of the snappy one-liner. That’s a risky position, but so far she’s pulled it off.

There could be a wealth of material as the show progresses and the sophisticates, all over 40, become enlightened to the advantages of the de-hipped. When they enter a bar, they’re stunned as men actually look at them, not through them with the bored, practiced eyes of feigned indifference. The women are wary and a little appalled, but intrigued as a group of men asks them to join them at their table. They’re stunned motionless as the men rise and pull out chairs for them.

Gentlemen?

I don’t think we’re in LA anymore, Toto.

But what seems most remarkable to the explorers into Cleveland’s nightlife is that people eat, and they’re not ashamed to do so publicly. Even more exotic, these natives eat carbs. It’s as if the Angelenos have found themselves in another dimension of time and space, and they like it.

A love interest gone bad prompts Melanie to stay, re-invent herself and try something completely different: Cleveland. Her companions progress from horrified, to dubious, to curious and ultimately, decide to spend the rest of their Paris vacation time with her. Unlike LA, they’ve come to find they’re “hot in Cleveland,” so why not stay for a while?

According to Nielsen Fast National data, Hot in Cleveland broke network records by attracting almost 5 million viewers for its premiere.

Hot in Cleveland airs Wednesdays on TV Land.