It looks like the Conners are here to stay.
In the wake of the Roseanne revival premiere’s blockbuster ratings performance, it’s “a foregone conclusion” that ABC will renew the series for an additional season, a source close to the show tells TVLine. In fact, TVLine has learned that preliminary conversations about a second revival season (aka Season 11) were already underway long before Tuesday’s ratings came in. (TVLine has reached out to ABC for a comment, but we have yet to hear back.)
Earlier this week, co-showrunner Whitney Cummings expressed confidence about the show’s renewal prospects, telling me on The TVLine Podcast that it’s just a matter of getting everyone’s “schedules to align.” Co-star (and recent Oscar nominee) Laurie Metcalf could prove the most challenging to pin down. “Laurie can’t stop getting nominated for awards,” Cummings noted with a laugh. “[Hopefully] we can find a way to get her for a couple months straight. From what I gather, everyone is ready to do it again. Everybody wants to do it again.”
And that everyone includes titular star Roseanne Barr. “We all want to keep doing it,” she told the New York Times, “so we just hope people like it and they watch it, and it gets renewed, you know, we all want that.”
Tuesday’s two-episode Roseanne premiere drew an average 18.2 million total viewers and a 5.1 demo rating, easily ranking as the 2017-18 TV season’s biggest launch. TVLine readers gave the opener an average grade of “B,” while the second episode notched a “B+.”
