One sounds like a foghorn, the other can kill you with saccharine. Bea Arthur and Betty White are part of an Odd Foursome of sprightly old women who could make Saturday night television worth watching again.

A female version of "Cocoon," minus aliens, NBC's "Golden Girls" is about four women over 50 who share a house in Miami Beach. They may be graying, but they're young at heart. The result is easily the funniest new comedy of the season and will premiere at 9 p.m. Sept 14.

But don't just take our word for it. Joel Segal, executive vice president of the Ted Bates advertising agency, says the pilot "mines laughs out of almost every line," adding that the first episode is "outrageously funny."

Besides the lines of dialogue, the series dares to be different because of the lines on the faces of Arthur, White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, a real find from Broadway's "Torch Song Trilogy" who plays Arthur's mother in the series.

Too many recent comedies have catered to the youth market with beautiful people for parents and precocious kid actors for offspring. "Golden Girls" has no one in the cast under the drinking age--for liquor or prune juice, for that matter.

"Let's face it. We're not gonna play 'Charlie's Angels,'" said Arthur.

"'Golden Girls' defies all the demographic rules of television," said Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment.

In recent months, NBC has chided CBS for its programming skew toward older audiences, but NBC officials say "Golden Girls" will appeal to all ages in the same way that "Cocoon" and "On Golden Pond" had universal appeal.

Will there be any grandchildren or other kids on the show, the cast was asked at a recent press conference.

"Kids?" Arthur shot back, looking down her nose the way she did when her character, Maude, locked horns with Archie Bunker a decade ago. "I think you can spray for them, can't you?"

An effete cook, played by Charles Levin, was part of the first episode's ensemble, but he's been dropped. "There just wasn't that much room with four big-mouthed ladies," said White.

Susan Harris ("Soap," "Hail To The Chief") wrote the pilot script and will serve as producer, but more than the clever writing, it's the delivery, timing and personalities of these four brassy actresses that raises "Golden Girls" well above standard sitcom.

"We're all fairly bawdy ladies, particularly Betty White," said Arthur.

White, who played the catty, man-chasing Sue Ann on the "Mary Tyler Moore Show", can give as well as she receives.

When Arthur had trouble locating a questioner at a news conference, White directed her co-star to look to the left. "That's the one with the watch on," White said in her deadpan way.

All the actresses professed the standard admiration for each other's professionalism. White did too, but couldn't resist joking: "I don't look for too much trouble until possibly the third show."

White's biting wit was integral to Sue Ann's character. The actress's late husband, Allen Ludden, used to say that White and Sue Ann were the same person, except White couldn't cook.

But in "Golden Girls," White and McClanahan (also from "Maude") have exchanged their usual roles. McClanahan's Blanche is a Southern belle looking to get married again, while Rose, a very caring grief counselor, is a widow who still refers to her husband in the present tense.

"Actually," White said about her character, "Rose is not dim-witted. ...Rose hears things, she just doesn't hear them as fast as the others."

Since "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Maude," White and Arthur have starred in sitcom flops. White's vehicle was "The Betty White Show," in which she played a fading actress in a TV series. Arthur was proprietor of a hotel in a ripoff of the British farce "Fawlty Towers."

"The only thing it had to do with "Fawlty Towers" was that I got to beat up the little servant," said Arthur.

In the 1980s, network TV on Saturday night has become a losing proposition, losing viewers to pay-cable movies, video cassette rentals and the networks' own inept programming. Saturday hasn't been funny since Mary Tyler Moore left Minneapolis and Bob Newhart surrendered his couch.