From left, Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick and Jane Leeves

Hot in Cleveland, a new show on TV Land, premiered last Wednesday with record ratings and plenty of laughs…both of which may be attributed to the show’s scene-stealing star, Betty White. The 88-year-old actress, who seems to be Hollywood’s “it” girl at the moment, is continuing her popular streak with her new sharp-tongued character on Cleveland. Her three co stars, Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick, also entertain in this infectious comedy about three women rediscovering their youth as they crash land in Cleveland, Ohio.

Melanie Moretti (Bertinelli) Joy Scroggs (Leeves) and Victoria Chase (Malick) are three women from Los Angeles embarking on a new adventure. As the pilot opens, the women are on a plane to Paris to check off number 122 on Melanie’s “200 things to do before I die list.” But, on their way to la ville d’amour, their plane makes an emergency landing in, yep, you guessed it, Cleveland. Although they are at first frustrated over this detour, the three friendsbegin to like the Ohio city because of the unexpected attention they receive from the men in a bar. As 40+ women used to being overlooked by the opposite sex in fast-paced Los Angeles, they aren’t used to being treated as eye candy. Enjoying the male interest, the three gal pals decide to “reinvent themselves” (no. 17 on Melanie’s list) and spend the two weeks they were originally going to enjoy in Paris, in Cleveland.

As the materialistic yet likeable characters, the three actresses have great chemistry and are very entertaining. But, halfway through the premiere episode, White steps onscreen and multiplies the show’s enjoyment with the first of many snarky comments. The former Golden Girl steals a number of scenes with her lively sense of humor and spot-on joke delivery. She kept the live studio audience in stitches with lines such as, “At 20, you dress for men. At 40, you dress for success. At 80, you dress for the bathroom.”

Because there are four women featured on the show, the comparisons to White’s old sitcom are inevitable, but the number of characters is one of the only similarities between The Golden Girls and producer Sean Hayes’s and Todd Milliner’s Cleveland. For instance, whereas White’s character on Golden Girls was portrayed as aloof and innocent, her new role as an apartment caretaker keeps her aloof, but comes with a feisty new attitude.

Cleveland’s premiere was so “hot” that it was the highest rated show on cable with 5 million viewers overall. With those numbers, Betty White has proven that 88 is the new 20.