Someone doesn’t like The Big Bang Theory. The cast don’t seem that bothered (Picture: CBS)

Today marks 10 years since the first episode of The Big Bang Theory aired.

In the past decade, this science-y sitcom has taken over the small screen – there have been 231 episodes, and it’s syndicated internationally in 77 different countries.

The series has been hailed as the new Friends, and it’s even set to spawn its first spinoff programme this year: Young Sheldon.

Currently, there’s no similar programme that’s quite so ubiquitous.


And there’s no similar programme that’s quite so awful.

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Granted, there’s an inherent difficulty in writing about comedy because it’s so subjective – what one person likes won’t necessarily apply across the board, and it’s certainly clear that a lot of people like The Big Bang Theory.



And, indeed, with a decade’s worth of material to wade through, statistically the show has to have had a few good jokes.

But that doesn’t detract from the fact that, on the whole, it’s a pretty lazy programme – quick to go for the cheapest joke in every case, a lot of the humour tends to come from simply referencing nerd stuff.

If you take a look at clips of the show where the laugh track has been removed, it really underlines just how flat the programme is.

Of course, the pop culture jokes – such as they are – don’t comprise the entirety of the programme.

There are also wisecracks at the expense of its lead character Sheldon and his various personality disorders (left officially undiagnosed to give a handy disclaimer) but it’s clear enough what the intention is.

Equally, there are a lot of jokes where the punchline is vaguely racist, sexist, or homophobic – or, a lot of the time, not even vaguely.

This clip is, in a way, a pretty good encapsulation of the problems with the programme.

It manages to tick off both the stilted nerd references and goes on to talk about negging, the misogyny self-evident there.

You might be hard-pressed to argue this actually matters – it’s just a rubbish sitcom, in the end.

There are bad jokes, and sexist jokes, in all manner of programmes, from Friends to How I Met Your Mother to Outnumbered.

The Big Bang Theory manages to be worse than a lot of its competitors, but at the end of the day, that’s still significant.

In real life, those four guys wouldn’t just be harmless and hapless.

Indeed, a lot of the things they say wouldn’t feel at all out of place in the controversial Google memo – written by a disgruntled Google employee, a polemic against diversity in technology fields.

That The Big Bang Theory normalises these views by setting them to a laugh track each week is, to say the least, not great.

Ultimately, then, The Big Bang Theory remains, after 10 long years, the worst programme on air.

Let’s hope that it ends sooner rather than later.



Alex Moreland is a freelance writer and student based in London. You can read more of his work here.

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