Norman Lear, Whose Comedies Changed the Face of TV, Is Dead at 101

But Mr. Lear also had his share of flops. In 1975, his “Hot L Baltimore,” a sitcom set in a run-down hotel and based on a play by Lanford Wilson, lasted 13 weeks on ABC. And after a few more short-lived shows, his hot streak was over by the mid-1980s. Some later projects — among them “704 Hauser” (1994), about a Black family living in Archie Bunker’s former home — were on the air for only a few weeks; others never got off the ground.

Keeping a Hand In

He nevertheless kept his hand in television. In 2003, he helped write a few episodes of “South Park,” the taboo-breaking animated series that was the “All in the Family” of its day. (The show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have said that their bile-spewing character Eric Cartman is partly based on Archie Bunker.)

In 2009, Mr. Lear developed a series about professional wrestling for HBO, although it was not picked up. For several years he found no takers for his proposed series about retirees in Southern California, “Guess Who Died?”; that changed in 2017, when NBC committed to produce a pilot, but a year later the network declined to pick up the show.

Mr. Lear was the executive producer of a new version of “One Day at a Time,” centered on a Latino family, for Netflix. That series made its debut in 2017, to enthusiastic reviews, and lasted three seasons.

In July 2021, on Mr. Lear’s 99th birthday, TBS announced that it would develop a reboot of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” starring Emily Hampshire, with Mr. Lear as an executive producer. The show has not yet begun production, but at his death Mr. Lear had other projects in the works, including an animated version of “Good Times”; a reboot of “Who’s the Boss?”; and a sitcom, starring Laverne Cox and the comedian George Wallace, about a man who learns that his adult son has transitioned.

In May 2019, Mr. Lear and Jimmy Kimmel hosted a TV special on which episodes of “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” were recreated live by an all-star cast, including Woody Harrelson as Archie Bunker and Jamie Foxx as George Jefferson. The special was produced by Mr. Lear, Mr. Kimmel and others as part of a deal Mr. Lear had signed with Sony that included an option to reimagine his past shows and potentially produce reboots. A second special, recreating episodes of “All in the Family” and “Good Times,” aired that December; a third, recreating episodes of two other series Mr. Lear’s company had produced, “The Facts of Life” and “Diff’rent Strokes,” was broadcast in 2021.