Reba: The Sitcom Good Luck Charm She May Need
Reba McEntire and her new sitcom co-stars Melissa Peterman and Rex Linn (yes, Reba’s boyfriend) held a press junket in Hollywood last week for their new Happy’s Place sitcom, which will premiere on NBC on October 18th.
One of the gems revealed at the junket is that a theme song for the show is in the works. Reba told the press of the new song, which she will sing, “It’s written, and we’re recording it at the end of this month.” She added with her trademark Reba grin, “We’ll see if you like it.”
It may be the good luck charm the country icon needs for a successful sitcom run. In 2001, her Reba sitcom, which ran for six seasons, had a theme song the country queen sang, “I’m Survivor.” The song came out as a radio single at the same time the TV show did.
Happy’s Place reunites McEntire with both her Reba producer, Kevin Abbot, and her Reba co-star, Melissa Peterman. She said, “Ever since we stopped doing Reba, we’ve been looking for another project to do. I love the sitcom genre. Out of all the things I do, this is my favorite.”
Happy’s Place follows McEntire’s character named Bobbi in the aftermath of her father’s death, which results in her inheriting a bar and a new business partner in the half-sister she never knew she had.
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McEntire’s coaching gig on NBC’s The Voice is likely driving more fans to watch her 2000s-era sitcom Reba, which is available to stream on Netflix.
Reba told the LA Times, “When we were coming back from Africa, we stopped in Atlanta, and people were coming up saying they’re loving watching it on Netflix.”
She added, “Friends of mine will tell me that their nieces and their kids are watching it now, so we’ve got two or three new generations watching, which just thrills me to pieces.”
Reba ran for six seasons on the WB and its successor, the CW.
According to the LA Times, the combination of platforms pushed the show into Nielsen’s top 10 streaming programs for the week of May 13-19, with 744 million minutes watched.
On the new sitcom, she plays a woman who inherits a restaurant from her father and then learns she has to share it with a half-sister she never knew existed. She noted of the role, “It’s those kind of twists that make people go, ‘Oh, my gosh, how’s she gonna survive this?”
Before she hosted the ACM Awards for the 17th time in May, the country icon walked the ACM Red Carpet and said with glee when her new NBC sitcom was mentioned: “Happy’s Place got picked up, and we’re so happy Barbara Jean’s (Melissa Peterman’s well-known character on the Reba sitcom) coming back, and her name is Gabby on the show. It’s very appropriate for Melissa Peterman. I love that it’s all the Harts and my sister.”
