¹ It’s unclear whether we should credit the 1979–88 NBC sitcom The Facts of Life as a pre–Golden Girls inventor of the Rule of Four. Set at the fictional Eastland Academy in Peekskill, New York, the show originally centered on a larger group of young girls, and did not pare its cast down to just four—plus older house mother Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae)—until its second season, beginning in 1980.