‘Roseanne’ Sitcom Getting Reboot for the Trump Era

I’m not normally on the entertainment beat, but this story dovetails into politics quite nicely. Does anyone remember the sitcom “Roseanne?” Well, if you do, you may be interested to know that most of the original cast members from the show, which starred Rosanne Barr, are getting back together to produce an 8-episode run of a new version of the series.

Rosanne Barr in real life has been a supporter of President Trump, and her working class sitcom family back in the late 80s and early 90s would qualify as the Rustbelt working class demographic that turned the blue wall into a Trump victory.

The Hill reports on some more background:

Roseanne Barr plans to speak “very honestly” about politics on her revised sitcom, but it’s unclear if the outspoken comedian will mention President Trump specifically.

“I don’t know whether Roseanne will speak about Trump by name,” ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “But she’s going to speak very honestly.”

Barr, 64, is poised to star in an eight-episode reboot of her eponymous comedy about a blue-collar family, which ended in 1997.

“We’re going to be tackling some of the topics that are in the conversation today. I’ll leave it that,” Dungey said of the show, set to premiere in 2018.

Barr, who ran for president last year as the Peace and Freedom Party’s candidate, wrote on Twitter in April that the “new political reality in our country will make for some great jokes!”

Barr said last year the country would be “so lucky if Trump won.”

“Because then it wouldn’t be Hillary [Clinton],” she said.

ABC has stated that they see this new reboot as a means to cater a show toward the audience that elected Trump back in November:

Dungey said Monday that the election revealed “that there’s parts of our country that didn’t feel heard, that they didn’t have a voice. When you look at how the polling data went in the run-up to the election, it was kind of big surprise to many people that the election turned out as it did.”

Some may scoff at the reboot of an old yet successful show as more proof that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Normally I’d agree, but in this case, it almost seems entirely appropriate. The Connor family in the show lived life in the Midwest and brought the average working family to the TV screen with very gritty humor attached.

Here’s the premise of the original show from Wikipedia:

The show is centered on the Conners, an American working-class family struggling to get by on a limited household income in the fictional town of Lanford, Illinois.

…

Many critics considered the show notable as one of the first sitcoms to realistically portray a blue-collar American family with two parents working outside the home, as well as lead characters who were noticeably overweight without their weight being the target of jokes.

Clearly entertainment executives see a market here and don’t want to miss out on the payday if they can find a successful formula. Whether or not the new “Roseanne” can fit the bill remains to be seen. There is no word yet on whether the series will premiere.