Everything is working against the goofy geek show, so it’s announced a Young Sheldon prequel that could prove wildly popular – but looks far more likely to be a creepy, depressing disaster

The Big Bang Theory cannot last forever. At this stage, everything is working against it. It is 225 episodes old, and only a matter of weeks from reaching the point where Friends called it a day.

Three members of the cast reportedly earn a million dollars per episode now, and tend to engage in the sort of public contract-renewal heel-dragging that usually signals the start of a show’s death spiral. Worst of all, Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki are both in their 40s, which threatens to topple the premise – goofy young geeks live together and bond over how ill-equipped they are to deal with life – into territory that’s about as creepy as it is depressing.

And this has left The Big Bang Theory in a quandary. People still watch the show in incredible numbers – its Nielsen ratings have it as the second biggest show in America – but it’s becoming long in the tooth. Which leaves only one option: bring on the kids.

It has been confirmed that, later this year, production will begin on a Big Bang Theory spin-off called Young Sheldon. Narrated by Parsons, it will tell us what Sheldon Cooper was like aged nine, back when he was a precocious young genius and not the horrifying, developmentally arrested Pee Wee Herman he has since become.

You can see why Young Sheldon got the green light. It’s about a wildly popular character from a wildly popular show. It’ll probably be set in the 1980s, so it’ll come with the warm glow of nostalgia. It was created by the same executive producers who came up with its parent show. And the first episode is being directed by none other than Jon Favreau. Nothing is being left to chance here, which means it’s a shame that Young Sheldon will be awful and nobody will watch it and it’ll go down in history as a Joey-level disaster.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Big Bang Theory is still the second biggest show in America – but it cannot last for ever. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive/Getty

Admittedly some prequels do work. Better Call Saul works. But that’s arguably because Better Call Saul didn’t decide to replace Bob Odenkirk with a six-year-old whose main arc involves running scams on his schoolmates. Similarly, Bates Motel might have cast a younger man to play Norman Bates, but it also tells the story of how he came to murder his mother. As far as we know, Sheldon Cooper has no such seismic moment to work up to. Unless he did actually murder someone, of course. Come to think of it, he does seem quite murdery as an adult.

Plus, there’s the child actor issue to contend with. Even if Iain Armitage, the boy drafted in to play young Sheldon, is the greatest actor of his generation – and I’ve seen no evidence that he isn’t – asking adult viewers to watch a kid aw-shucks his way through an entire series seems a ludicrously big ask. The best case scenario is that the show will be a success until Armitage hits puberty, loses his USP and has to spend 15 years in the wilderness before he mounts a Neil Patrick Harris-style comeback. The worst case scenario is that he burns out early, becomes a Seventh-Day Adventist and trashes the show in public like the kid from Two and a Half Men did in 2012. And that kid only had to shoulder some of the limelight. Young Sheldon will be front and centre. Either way, poor kid.

There are other considerations to think of. Executive producer Chuck Lorre has made a trademark of ending his shows with brief, one-off vanity cards that serve as kind of hubristic Facebook posts. If he were to slap one of these – say, the one where he went after Rachel Maddow, or the one where he mourned the decline of western civilisation – after an innocent sitcom about a toothy kid, it might look a bit weird. Plus, you know, The Big Bang Theory isn’t actually very funny.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Young Sheldon will be just what The Big Bang Theory needs to propel itself forwards for decades to come. Maybe statues will be erected in its honour. But I’m still going to watch the first episode through my fingers.