Los Angeles

Producer Norman Lear said yesterday that his new sitcom, "Sunday Dinner," will have a Baltimore connection.

The show, starring Robert Loggia, is about a father and three grown daughters, who live in Long Island. One of the daughters, Lear said, is a 32-year-old single parent who has returned to the Johns Hopkins University to earn a Ph.D. in microbiology.

When reminded at a press conference here that Hopkins is in Baltimore, not New York, Lear said, "I know, but she commutes back every weekend." Since the show is built around the Sunday dinner table, Lear said, the weekend commuter idea would work.

But why not just have her go to a school in a New York? "Because she believes Johns Hopkins is the best," he said.

The show will premiere on CBS in March.