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It’s pretty safe to say that one of the most highly-anticipated TV shows in the first half of 2018 will be the revival of Roseanne, which just wrapped production and is set to return to ABC on March 27. One of the most popular sitcoms of the late ’80s and early ’90s, audiences were drawn to the lower-middle-class, down-to-earth sensibilities and difficulties faced by the Connor family, and Roseanne Barr wrenching control of the show in its early seasons only served to make the show better and more relevant to its target audience.
But in the 20 years that Roseanne has been off the air, things have changed a lot, and we don’t mean that John Goodman has lost a lot of weight, Johnny Galecki is now one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, or Michael Fishman is now (gulp) middle-aged. No, what’s changed is that Barr herself has not just made a hard turn with her political worldview, but gone to batshit lengths to defend it (that is, if you take her social media posturing at face value).
On Sunday, for instance, Barr, who is staunchly pro-Israel, tweeted this statement about the singer Lorde, who cancelled a planned concert in Tel Aviv after reading up on Israel’s history:
She not only called Lorde a “bigot,” but urged her followers to boycott her music. Her views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict aside, those are strong words from someone who is starring in a network sitcom, even by 2017 standards. She then proceeded to retweet people who supported her view.
Roseanne often retweets Breitbart and other alt-right news sources, and supported Donald Trump because she had no desire to see Hillary Clinton as president:
Now, being right-leaning by itself doesn’t mean that America won’t embrace a sitcom; the fact that she’s not another “elitist Hollywood liberal” will be seen in a favorable light by a large segment of the country. But that large segment, the segment that are mixed politically or are conservative but not alt-right, are not going to follow Roseanne back to TV if her show reflects her sometimes-extreme views and support of alt-right conspiracies.
Barr insisted that the new season of Roseanne won’t be about Trump, and she said so in no uncertain terms:
But we also know from the show’s bizarre final season of its original run — a season which the revival will all but ignore — that when Barr is at her most unfettered, the results can be unpredictable.
Will & Grace has raised the standards of what a revival of a former hit series can be. And Roseanne, when it was at its best, could be a wickedly funny commentary on how families in Middle America live on the edge, both financially and emotionally. I certainly hope that, her current views notwithstanding, Barr and her writers reflect the 2018 version of that. If the show is at all like her Twitter feed, though, I’m going to check out in a hurry.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
