‘The Bachelor’ for Boomers: ABC Ages Up Its Romance Franchise

After 28 seasons of featuring young people looking for love, ABC is expanding its Bachelor franchise to the golden years.

The network has greenlit The Golden Bachelor, which will feature a man and a group of women on the other side of 60 years old looking for love. The show will be part of ABC’s strike-proof, all-unscripted schedule in the fall, airing after Dancing With the Stars on Monday nights.

The idea for an aged-up Bachelor has been kicking around for a few years, with ABC releasing a casting call for senior citizens looking for love in early 2020. Those plans were scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic. ABC put out another casting call earlier this year.

There are no details yet as to who will take part in The Golden Bachelor, which like other entries in the franchise comes from Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon. The show’s official description reads as follows: “After more than 20 years of fostering young love on The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, The Golden Bachelor showcases a whole new kind of love story — one for the golden years. On this all-new unscripted series, one hopeless romantic is given a second chance at love in the search for a partner with whom to share the sunset years of life. The women arriving at the mansion have a lifetime of experience, living through love, loss and laughter, hoping for a spark that ignites a future full of endless possibilities. In the end, will our Golden man turn the page to start a new chapter with the woman of his dreams?”

The median age for an ABC viewer is a little over 61 years old — in the middle of the pack for English-language broadcast networks in the United States. According to a 2020 YouGov survey, more than 40 percent of the Bachelor audience is older than 55.