Stephen King Golden Years

DailyDead Review

We live in a culture where people are always looking for ways to seem younger — botox, chemical peels, hair dye, and the list goes on. What if you could actually get younger? Maybe take a special pill or shot and grow younger, gradually, so people wouldn’t notice a stark difference.

Sounds good right? What if there wasn’t a cut off? You might just Benjamin Button your way on out; start out at twenty-five and wake up an infant months later. What’s next? An embryo? An atom? Nothing? For Harlan Williams this is life.

Harlan (Keith Szarabajka - The Dark Knight) having been exposed to an experimental chemical in a lab explosion has noticed himself growing younger: scars disappearing, eyesight changes, etc. When his wife (Frances Sternhagen - The Mist) notices little changes, Harlan knows that his secret is out. After the wrong people get a whiff of Harlan’s reverse aging, people around him start dying in mysterious ways, and it’s time to run. Where do you run when the Shop, the scariest department in the F.B.I. is looking for you?

Stephen King’s Golden Years was a short lived television series, aired on CBS in 1991,  dropped just after the first seven episodes. I enjoyed this series, there were a lot of elements of humor, life long love and a great theme song by David Bowie. I was able to watch it all at once though, whereas weekly viewers may have lost interest as they waited for the next episode. There were a few cliff hangers at the ends of episodes, but the shows could be a bit slow at times.

While this series isn’t terrifying like some of King’s other works (Cujo, It,The Shinning) one of the aspects that Golden Years has going for it is King’s insight into what it means to grow old with someone. There are, of course, suspenseful moments and excitement, but the deeper side investigates everlasting love in extremely trying times. Many horror fans might not like a mushy, gushy film, but before you write of Golden Years, think about what scares you the most. When it comes down to it, isn’t is scariest to imagine losing the one you care about the most?

This series is obscure enough for you to impress your hipster friends, bragging that you saw it first. The released recording, also available on instant Netflix, has an alternate ending from the televised version in 1991. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have changed the original ending of Golden Years, even if there were loose ends that didn’t get tied up by a second season. The original ending is much more real and raw, whereas the “new” ending gets a bit cheesy.

You can find the original ending and a commercial for Golden Years below.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OiR0X49NFKk

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7