“Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” has four episodes. Netflix released the revival miniseries on November 25, 2016, with one feature-length episode representing each season of the year: “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall.”
The four installments run much longer than ordinary television episodes, with runtimes ranging from about 88 to 102 minutes. Together, they revisit Lorelai, Rory, and Emily Gilmore nearly a decade after the original series ended, while exploring the family’s changing relationships and the death of Richard Gilmore.
The revival was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, who returned after not working on the original series’ seventh season. Much of the original cast came back, including Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop, Scott Patterson, and Melissa McCarthy.
A common mistake is to count the revival as a conventional fourth season of “Gilmore Girls.” It is instead a four-part limited series, with each episode functioning almost like a television movie and corresponding to one season of the year.