Broadcast’s only Latino show to premiere this fall has been canceled. According to Deadline, Pop TV has opted not to renew One Day at a Time for the fifth season. Sony Pictures TV, which produces the show, hopes to find the Emmy-winning sitcom another network.
According to Deadline, the reboot of Norman Lear’s (Good Times, The Jeffersons) 1970s original show ran on Netflix for three seasons before being canceled in 2018. Sony shopped the series around until it landed on Pop for the fourth season. However, between the merging of CBS and Viacom and the rise of the COVID pandemic, the series struggled to find solid footing.
According to Deadline, Pop TV, a subsidiary of CBS, was reassigned under Viacom’s Entertainment & Youth division. With the ending of Schitt’s Creek, the network corrected away from original scripted series, leaving One Day at a Time the only of its kind on the network. In attempts to gain new viewership, the fourth season aired on both Pop TV and TV Land, with hopes of eventually being renewed on the latter. The series even aired episodes on CBS hoping to bank on the network’s large audience. But ratings remained modest. In addition to low ratings, COVID curtailed the fourth season to only six proper episodes with an additional animated feature centering on the election.
The series starred Justina Machado (Jane the Virgin, Queen of the South) as the head of a Cuban-American household. The divorced army veteran lives with her teen children and mother played by Isabella Gomez (Modern Family, Matador), Marcel Ruiz (Breakthrough), and Rita Moreno (The King and I, West Side Story) respectively. The show explored an array of issues including immigration, PTSD, substance misuse, and sexuality. Lear served as creator and showrunner along with Gloria Calderon Kellett (Cups and Robbers, Stripped) and Mike Royce (Men of a Certain Age, Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show).
According to Deadline, Calderon Kellett spoke extensively about the direction and storylines for a potential fifth season in an interview last month.
“Obviously, we would absorb (the unproduced storylines); we have so many beautiful episodes,” Calderon Kellett said via Deadline. “There was the one that Justina was going to direct, which is another beautiful religion episode, which we would love to put into Season 5 and give her that directing debut and also beautiful script written by Sebastian Jones and so many other really wonderful storylines that we really, really want to do, in terms of Elena figuring out where she’s going to school and really what’s going to be happening to these kids, as well as what Penelope’s love life looks like now with Max, their sort of modern relationship. We have so much more to tell, and especially with everything that’s going on in this world, every day, I’m like, oh my gosh, Elena would say this. Elena would say that. Elena would say this. It’s just ripe with things that this family would be talking about,” Kellett said via Deadline.
According to Deadline, Sony is currently working to find the show another network as they have the cast on option through December. Both Lear and Calderon Kellett are optimistic the show will live on.
“This family, we have so much for them to go through still,” Calderon Kellett said via Deadline.