Roseanne Roseanne Roseanne logo Genre Sitcom Running time approx. 0:30 (per episode) Creator(s) Matt Williams Starring Roseanne Barr John Goodman Laurie Metcalf Sara Gilbert Lecy Goranson (1988-1992, 1995-1996) Michael Fishman Sarah Chalke (1993-1997) Country of origin USA Original network/channel ABC Original run October 18, 1988 - May 20, 1997 No. of episodes 222 IMDb profile This article refers to the sitcom "Roseanne". For the actress/comedian, see Roseanne Barr. For the talk show, see The Roseanne Show. Roseanne was an American sitcom which aired on ABC from 1988 to 1997, starring the stand-up comedian Roseanne Barr. The show's working title, and the title of its pilot episode, was Life and Stuff. The show portrayed a working-class family living in fictional Lanford, Illinois, and struggling to get by on a limited income. For many years, Roseanne was, in contrast to many of the most popular shows at the time, honest in its depiction of family life, tackling subjects of poverty, alcoholism, sex, first periods, masturbation, obesity, spousal abuse, and homosexuality in ways unlike other shows. Another theme of the show was Roseanne's dominance in raising the children, with her husband Dan feeling that he doesn't have a voice in what happens in the family, and is not well informed of what happens in his household. The show was hugely successful from its beginning, spending its first six seasons in the top five and inspiring a rash of stand-ups getting their own sitcom deals (a practice that continued for years afterwards). By the mid-'90s, however, the series began to be known more for the public and backstage scandals of Barr. There was constant turnover of writers and producers through the course of the series, including her second husband, Tom Arnold. During its final season, the show drifted away from its original storyline. During the seventh season, the show dropped sharply in the ratings, and by the final season (1996-1997), it had fallen out of the top thirty.
