But Rita Moreno wasn’t having it. “Yes, we were!” she said, sounding much like the indomitable matriarch she plays on the show.

The social-media outcry at the time was intense, as was the response from TV critics, who wrote dozens of pieces about the show’s cancellation and why it deserved to be rescued. But the most important reaction was the one that came from Sony Pictures Television, which produces the series.

The day the showrunners found out Netflix didn’t want a fourth season, Royce said, Sony executives “called us and they’re like, ‘We’re getting this show on somewhere.’”

That somewhere ended up being Pop TV, the cable channel owned by ViacomCBS that is best known for the quirky Canadian comedy “Schitt’s Creek.” On Tuesday, “One Day at a Time” debuts at its new home just over a year after Netflix cut it loose. The fourth season picks up as the family answers questions from a census worker played by Ray Romano (and takes a slight dig at Netflix, as well).

The fact that “One Day at a Time” was canceled at all still seems surprising given its devoted audience and versatile premise. The cancellation, after 39 episodes, was crushing because “we just got started, really,” said Royce, who had been an executive producer on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” among other shows.

If a family comedy is successful, the audience wants to “live in that world and hang out with that family,” Royce said. “But we only got to hang out for a little while.”