Geek series going out with a bang

Peopled by sometimes awkward geeks making physics references, the finale of The Big Bang Theory airs today.

It had seemed destined at first to appeal to a niche audience. But the show has become one of the most-watched series in the world.

Focused on whether characters Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah-Fowler will win the Nobel prize, the show is going out on top as it wraps up its 12th and final season.

The show, which airs on US network CBS, has carved its place at the top of American television, with more than 12 million live viewers for much of the most-recent season (17 million when including delayed watchers). These are similar levels to Game of Thrones.

According to research firm Parrot, it was one of the five most popular shows in the world last year, a streak CBS would have been happy to continue were it not for Sheldon actor Jim Parsons having announced he would leave the show after the 12th season.

For producer and writer Stephen Engel, Big Bang Theory owes much of its success to an annoying-but-loveable character. “It was a serendipitous blending of a character and an actor that was just magic,” he said.

Depicting a brilliant scientist who is socially clueless, Sheldon’s portrayal was “just a perfect marriage of point of view, jokes, voice and actor that made that character jump off the screen”, Engel said.

But Sheldon’s charm alone can’t explain how a series that wasn’t critically acclaimed or even breaking into the top 50 most popular at the end of its first season went on to run longer than American sitcom classics like Friends, The Cosby Show and Seinfeld.

According to conventional wisdom, it was the portrayal of characters like Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj as proud geeks that accounted for its longevity. Geek culture has made its way into the mainstream so there was a growing audience that had an affinity with them. – Citizen reporter