The prayers, hopes, and begging of the dedicated fans of One Day at a Time have been answered. The beloved series, canceled by Netflix last spring, will live to go on to Season 4 as the CBS owned Pop cable channel renewed the series.
What is Pop TV?
Pop TV is the CBS-owned former TV Guide Channel that is now home to shows like the hit series Schitt’s Creek.
Pop TV ordered 13 new episodes of One Day at a Time that are expected to air in 2020. They also bought linear rights for the first three seasons of ODAAT as reported by Deadline. So, Pop will air new episodes, and CBS will run repeats to get potential new viewers on the actual broadcast network.
One Day at a Time focuses on the Cuban-American Alvarez family and their network of friends and colleagues. Penelope Alvarez (Justina Machado) is a veteran with PTSD who works as a nurse for the lovable dweeb Dr. Leslie Berkowitz (Stephen Tobolowsky).
She is also recently separated from her husband Victor, raising activist teen daughter Elena (Isabella Gomez) and cool kid tween Alex (Marcel Ruiz) with the help of her dramatic Cuban Mother Lydia Riera (Rita Moreno).
They have virtually adopted building owner and recovering drug-alcohol addict Schneider (Todd Grinnell).
One Day at a Time never shies away from tough topics including PTSD, addiction, complicated relationships, immigration, sexism, human sexuality and stereotyping.
In the months since the cancellation was announced, the stars of the show were joined by many supporters in the Latinx and LGBTQ communities as well as overall fans of good TV to call for Netflix to renew or for another sympathetic network to take it on.
EGOT legend and star of ODAAT, Rita Moreno and Norman Lear penned a letter to The Hollywood Reporter asking for people to help save the show. The fans, including Lin Manuel Miranda responded and have been passionate about trying to save the series.
Because of complicated rules associated with streaming sites such as Netflix, ODAAT could only be saved if Netflix changed its position or a broadcast network stepped in to save the day, and it is appropriate that CBS answered the call as it was the network that broadcast the original 1975 sitcom of the same name.
One Day at a Time is produced by Act III Productions, Inc., Snowpants Productions and GloNation in association with Sony Pictures Television. It is executive produced by Lear, Gloria Calderón Kellett, Mike Royce, and Brent Miller. All of them, as well as all of the current stars of the series, will return for season 4.
It will be interesting to see if Netflix goes on to regret the decision to give up on One Day at a Time, but CBS and Pop have certainly made many fans happy today.
However, fans will have to get used to watching it one week at a time instead of engaging in a classic binge, but to us, it is worth it.
One Day at a Time currently streams on Netflix, while repeats will run on CBS soon and season 4 can be seen on Pop in 2020.