Another classic is getting in on the TV reboot craze. Deadline is reporting that Roseanne, the acclaimed ’90s sitcom from Roseanne Barr and co-starring John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf, is being primed for a return as an eight-episode limited series. Barr, Goodman, and Sara Gilbert are all signed on, Metcalf and others are expected to join them, and multiple outlets—including original home ABC and reboot lover Netflix—have already started bidding on the project.
Roseanne ran from 1988 to 1997 and was centered on the Conners, a working-class family in the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois. The series was noted for its realistic, sympathetic portrait of lower-income people, with both parents Roseanne (Barr) and Dan (Goodman) working outside the home and many episodes revolving around money problems. It also gradually tackled a range of social issues—one main character was notably revealed as a lesbian in the finale—and very unusually ended on the revelation that the entire original run was a lightly fictionalized, first-person account of Roseanne Conner’s life.
According to Deadline, ABC is particularly motivated to jump on the return of Roseanne in its ongoing effort to “better reflect” the lives of everyday Americans. That’s one effective way to spin the latest in a long line of buzzy sitcom reboots; indeed, Roseanne’s class-conscious portrayal of family life would still stick out as rare in today’s landscape. (It should also, as a clear depiction of Trump country, have a unique perspective to bring to the current political climate.) But it’s hard not to have some fatigue over this seemingly endless reboot trend and the fact that nothing in TV can really stay dead anymore.
That last point is especially true in Roseanne’s case, anyway. Will Dan be coming back from the dead? Assuming he does, there’s certainly a meta joke for the show to make there.
