How to watch Gilmore Girls - what’s it about and who’s in the cast?

How to watch Gilmore Girls

All 153 episodes of Gilmore Girls, plus the four-episode reboot, are available to stream on Netflix worldwide.

The series initially premiered on The WB back in 2000 and was moved to The CW in 2006 for a year.

Cast of Gilmore Girls

Lauren Graham (Parenthood, The Pacifier) stars as independent single mother Lorelai Gilmore while Alexis Bledel (The Handmaid's Tale, Sin City) co-stars as her bookish daughter and best friend Rory.

Kelly Bishop (Baby's mum in Dirty Dancing) plays Lorelai's stoic mother, while the late Edward Herrmann was the Gilmore family patriarch.

Lovable curmudgeon and diner owner Luke Danes, played by Scott Patterson, is an essential member of the Gilmore Girls extended family. Other key players include Jared Padalecki (Dean Forester), Milo Ventimiglia (Jess Mariano) and Matt Czuchry (Logan Huntzberger) as Rory's three main love interests.

Gilmore Girls also launched Melissa McCarthy's career. The Bridesmaids star played pathologically clumsy chef Sookie St James.

What is Gilmore Girls about?

The small-town drama follows hotel manager Lorelai Gilmore and her teenage daughter Rory as they juggle family, love and the ability to talk a mile-a-minute while still making sense.

The famously fast-talking, coffee-obsessed pair have carved themselves a cosy little life in a sleepy Connecticut village away from Lorelai's wealthy parents, who didn't support her decision to strike out on her own as a pregnant 16-year-old.

Fate (in the shape of a costly Ivy league prep school) thrusts the family back together, however, and seven series of Friday night dinners ensue.

As well as the family drama at the core of the show, key story lines include a will-they-won't-they dynamic between Lorelai and diner owner Luke, Rory's journey to and through college and Emil coming to terms with her daughter's way of life (sort of).

Though Gilmore Girls ended in 2007, it earned a new lease of life when all seven series appeared on Netflix in 2014.

Following a cast reunion at the ATX Festival that made the internet explode, a new series was announced by the streaming service.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life not only saw the return of the original cast, it also brought back its creator. Amy Sherman-Palladino wasn't involved in series 7, so the reboot offered her the chance to give Gilmore Girls the ending she'd always envisioned, including those game-changing last four words...

How many seasons of Gilmore Girls are there?

There are seven series of Gilmore Girls with 22 episodes each, except for series one, which has 21 episodes.

The 2016 Netflix reboot, titled Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, features four episodes, each named after a season.

Where is Gilmore Girls set?

Lorelai and Rory live in picture-postcard Stars Hollow, a fictional sleepy town inspired by a collection of real villages in the state of Connecticut.

Characters like oddball Kirk (played by Guardians of the Galaxy’s Sean Gunn), owner of Kim’s Antiques Mrs Kim and flamboyant dance teacher Miss Patty make up the fabric of the quirky town.

Where is Gilmore Girls filmed?

Gilmore Girls may be set in quaint New England, but Stars Hollow was actually a set built and housed in LA (save for the pilot, which was shot in suburban Toronto).

If you happen to find yourself in Burbank, you might want to take Warner Bros. Studio Tour to get a close-up experience with the set.

Other filming locations include Beverly Hills' Greystone Mansion and the Ebell club in LA, both of which served as Rory's posh high school.