Netflix Orders All-Latino Remake of Norman Lear’s ‘One Day at a Time’

Netflix has greenlit a 13-episode first season of One Day At a Time, an all-Latino reimagining of legendary producer Norman Lear’s classic 1970s sitcom.

The 93-year-old Lear will serve as producer on the new series, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The reimagined One Day At a Time will feature several new twists on the original CBS series, which starred Valerie Bertinelli, Bonnie Franklin, and Pat Harrington and ran for nine seasons between 1975 and 1984.

The updated series will focus on “a Cuban-American family, centering on a recently separated former military mom who is navigating a new single life while raising her radical teenaged daughter and socially adept tween son, with the ‘help’ of her old school Cuban-born mom and a friends-without-benefits building manager named Schneider,” according to Deadline.

The new series was co-written by How I Met Your Mother‘s Gloria Calderon-Kellett and Enlisted‘s Mike Royce. Oscar- and Emmy-winner Rita Moreno is reportedly set to star as the grandmother. The role of Schneider, the super played in the original series by Pat Harrington, will reportedly be the only one designated for a white actor on the show.

News of the all-Latino remake of One Day At a Time first surface in January, and Lear commented on possible changes to the series during an appearance at the summer iteration of the Television Critics Association press tour in August. Lear said then that the show would feature the grandmother as a central character as a way to focus on three generations of a Latino family living under one roof.

“I just love the idea because I don’t see enough of that representation on the air any place,” Lear said at the time, according to THR. “There isn’t enough of it and I think it’s a rich idea.”

News of Netflix’s pickup of the reimagined series comes as more television networks prioritize diverse casting practices in TV development. CBS announced Tuesday that its new Nancy Drew television series would feature a “diverse” actress in the lead role (but did not specify ethnicity), while ABC is preparing a television series based on the 1989 film Uncle Buck featuring an all-black cast.

On the first day of the TCA winter press tour last week, Lear said that politically correct television is failing the American people.

“I don’t think the narrow point of view serves the American people well,” Lear said of the quality of today’s television. “I don’t think the bumper-sticker quality of news and discussion helps us understand, and I think the obligation of broadcasters — when that word existed and there were three networks, the news was not expected to make money. I think the American people don’t get what they earn by way of help and understanding in context of what is going on in their world.”