The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory is an Americansitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom serve as executive producers on the show, along with Steven Molaro. All three also serve as head writers. It premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007.

The show is centered on five characters: roommates Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, two physicists who work at theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech);Penny, a blonde waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon's equally geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers aerospace engineerHoward Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali. The geekiness and intellect of the four guys is contrasted for comic effect with Penny's social skills and common sense. Three other supporting characters have also been promoted to starring roles:Leslie Winkle, a physicist colleague at Caltech and, at different times, a lover of both Leonard and Howard who left the show after season 3; Bernadette Rostenkowski, Howard's fiancée, who is a microbiologist and former part-time waitress alongside Penny; and Amy Farrah Fowler, a neurobiologist who joins the group after being matched to Sheldon on a dating website.

The show is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Chuck Lorre Productions. In August 2009, the sitcom won the best comedy series TCA award and Jim Parsons(Sheldon) won the award for individual achievement in comedy. In 2010, the show won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Comedy, while Parsons won a PrimetimeEmmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. On January 16, 2011, Parsons was awarded a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Comedy or Musical, an award that was presented by co-star Kaley Cuoco(Penny). On September 18, 2011, Parsons was again awarded an Emmy for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.

When the third season premiered on September 21, 2009, The Big Bang Theoryranked as CBS's highest-rated show of that evening in the adults 18–49 demographic (4.6/10), along with a then-series-high 12.83 million viewers. On May 19, 2010, it was announced that CBS would be moving the show to Thursdays at 8:00 ET for the 2010–2011 schedule. On January 12, 2011, CBS announced that the show had been renewed for an additional three years, extending it through the 2013–2014 season. The fifth seasonpremiered on September 22, 2011, in its usual time slot with two back-to-back episodes.The fifth season completed airing on May 10, 2012. The sixth season is expected to premiere in Fall 2012.

Production

The show's initial pilot, developed for the 2006–07 television season, was substantially different from its current form. The only characters from the initial pilot that were kept for the reshot pilot for the series were Leonard and Sheldon (portrayed by Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons respectively and named for comedy great Sheldon Leonard. The cast was rounded off by two female leads: Canadian actress Amanda Walsh as Katie, "a street-hardened, tough-as-nails, woman with a vulnerable interior" who the boys meet after she breaks up with her boyfriend and invite to live in their apartment (Katie was effectively replaced by Penny in the second pilot); and Iris Bahr as Gilda, a scientist colleague and friend of the boys who was threatened by Katie's presence. The initial pilot used Thomas Dolby's hit "She Blinded Me With Science" as theme music.

The series was not picked up, but the creators were given an opportunity to retool the show and produce a second pilot. They brought in the remaining cast and retooled the show to its final format. The original unaired pilot has never been officially released, but it has circulated on the Internet. On the evolution of the show, Lorre said "We did the 'Big Bang Pilot' about two and a half years ago, and it sucked... but there were two remarkable things that worked perfectly, and that was Johnny and Jim. We rewrote the thing entirely, and then we were blessed with Kaley and Simon and Kunal." As to whether the world will ever see that original pilot, maybe on a DVD, Lorre said "Wow that would be something, we will see. Show your failures..."

The title card for the original 2006 pilot

The first and second pilots of The Big Bang Theory were directed by James Burrows, who did not continue with the show. The reworked second pilot led to a 13-episode order by CBS on May 14, 2007.Prior to its airing on CBS, the pilot episode was distributed on iTunes free of charge. The show premiered September 24, 2007, and was picked-up for a full 22-episode season on October 19, 2007.However, production was halted on November 6, 2007 due to the Writers Guild of America strike. The series returned on March 17, 2008 in an earlier time slot and ultimately only 17 episodes were produced. After the strike ended, the show was picked up for a second season airing in the 2008–2009 season, premiering in the same time slot on September 22, 2008. With increasing ratings, the show received a two-year renewal through the 2010–11 season. Since then, the show has been picked up for three more seasons.

David Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, checks scripts and provides dialogue, mathematics equations, and diagrams used as props. According to executive producer/co-creator Bill Prady, "We're working on giving Sheldon an actual problem that he's going to be working on throughout the [first] season so there's actual progress to the boards ... We worked hard to get all the science right."

Several of the actors in The Big Bang Theory worked together previously on Roseanneincluding Johnny Galecki, Sara Gilbert, and Laurie Metcalf (who plays Sheldon's mother, Mary Cooper). Additionally, Lorre was a writer on the series for several seasons.

Theme song

Single cover for "Big Bang Theory Theme" by Barenaked Ladies (2007)

The Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladieswrote and recorded the show's theme song, which describes the history and formation of the universe and the Earth. Ed Robertson, lead singer and guitarist in the band, was asked by Lorre and Prady to write a theme song for the show. Having been asked to write songs for other films and shows only to have them rejected in favor of another artist's, Robertson agreed to write a theme only after learning that he was the sole writer that Lorre and Prady had asked. He drew inspiration from Simon Singh's book, Big Bang, which he had coincidentally just finished reading.

On October 9, 2007, a full-length (1 minute and 45 seconds) version of the song was released commercially. In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence ranked No.6 on a list of television's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.

Production costs

For the first three seasons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco and Jim Parsons, the three main stars of the show, received at most $60,000 per episode. The salary for the three went up to $200,000 per episode for the fourth season. According to their contracts, their pay will go up an additional $50,000 per episode in each of the following three seasons, culminating in $350,000 per episode in the seventh season.

Main cast

 List of The Big Bang Theory characters

Cast of characters in The Big Bang Theory. From left: Howard Wolowitz, Leonard Hofstadter, Penny, Sheldon Cooper and Rajesh Koothrappali.

These actors have been credited in all episodes of the series:

• Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter,Ph.D. – An experimental physicist with anIQ of 173, he received his Ph.D. when he was 24 years old. The straight man of the series, he shares an apartment with colleague and friend Sheldon Cooper. The writers immediately implied potential romance between him and neighborPenny, and their sexual tension is frequently explored.
• Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D., Sc.D. – Originally from East Texas, he was a child prodigy with an eidetic memory who began college at the age of 11 (after completing the fifth grade), started graduate studies at 14, and earned a Ph.D. at 16. A theoretical physicist focusing on quantum mechanics and string theory, he has a master's degree, a Ph.D. an Sc.D., and an IQ of 187. He exhibits a strict adherence to routine; a lack of understanding of irony and sarcasm; he is also uninterested in many of the romantic hijinks of his friends. Sheldon shares an apartment with Leonard Hofstadter, across the hall from Penny, and relies on both for advice in social situations. In the fourth season, he begins a relationship with Amy Farrah Fowler, who becomes his first girlfriend during the fifth season.
• Kaley Cuoco as Penny – From a small town outside of Omaha, Nebraska, a blonde who lives across the hall from Sheldon and Leonard. She is pursuing a career in acting, and has been on casting calls and auditions but has not been very successful thus far. To pay the bills, she is a waitress and occasional bartender at The Cheesecake Factory. To date, her last name has not been revealed. She dated Leonard at the end of the first season, and during the third and fifth seasons. By season four, Bernadette, Amy and Penny have formed their own group, who like to hang out in Penny's apartment or go out together.
• Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz, M.Eng. – He works as an aerospace engineer. He is Jewish, and lives with his mother. Unlike Sheldon, Leonard, and Raj, Howard lacks a Ph.D. He defends this by pointing out that he has a master's degree in engineering fromMIT and that the apparatus he designs are launched into space, unlike the purely abstract work of his friends. He provides outrageous pick-up lines and fancies himself a ladies' manwith suitably unimpressed reactions from Penny; however, he has shown limited success with other women. He claims to be a polyglot. He dates and later marries Bernadette Rostenkowski. In the fifth season, he trained as an astronaut and blasted off into space in the season finale.
• Kunal Nayyar as Rajesh Koothrappali, Ph.D. – Originally from New Delhi, India, and works as a particle astrophysicist at Caltech. His family is very well off. He communicates with his parents, Dr. and Mrs. V.M. Koothrappali, via webcam. He is very shy around women and is physically unable to talk to them unless he drinks alcohol (or thinks he has been drinking alcohol). However, he has often had better luck with women than his overly-confident best friend Howard. During the fourth season, his sister Priya (Aarti Mann) stays with him and became Leonard's girlfriend.

These actors were first credited as guest stars and later promoted to main cast. However, even after promotion, they are only credited in episodes in which they appear:

• Sara Gilbert as Leslie Winkle, Ph.D. (recurring season 1, starring season 2, recurring season 3) – a physicist who works in the same lab as Leonard. In appearance she is essentially Leonard's female counterpart, equipped with the black framed glasses andsweat jackets. She is an enemy of Sheldon's, due to their conflicting scientific theories. Though they both consider each other to be intellectually inferior, Leslie is much wittier than Sheldon, regularly calling him "dumbass", and usually bests him in their repartee. Leslie has had casual sex with Leonard and later Howard; in the case of the former, it reunites Gilbert and Galecki together on-screen after the two played the on-screen couple of Darlene Connor and David Healy respectively during the run of Roseanne. Gilbert was promoted to a main cast member during the second season, but was demoted again because producers could not generate enough content for the character. Gilbert left the series after season 3 concluded to focus her efforts on The Talk, on which she serves as executive producer for CBS.
• Melissa Rauch as Bernadette Rostenkowski, Ph.D. (recurring 3x05–3x14, starring since 4x04) – a young woman who is initially a waitress and co-worker of Penny paying her way through graduate school microbiology studies, she defends her doctoral thesis and lands a high-paying science position at the end of season 4. Bernadette is introduced to Howard by Penny. At first she and Howard do not get along, as they appear to have nothing in common. When they find out that they both have overbearing mothers, they feel a connection. They became engaged near the end of season 4.
• Mayim Bialik as Amy Farrah Fowler, Ph.D. (guest 3x23 until 4x05, starring since 4x08) – a woman Raj and Howard met on an online dating site after secretly setting up an account using Sheldon's name and information. The site matches her to Sheldon, and the two share many similar traits though Amy is more interested in social and romantic interaction. Once she and Sheldon meet, she becomes, as Sheldon puts it, a girl who is his friend, but not his "girlfriend". In Season Five, Amy made Sheldon jealous by going on a date with comic book store owner, Stuart, causing Sheldon to solidify their relationship as boyfriend/girlfriend. Sheldon then insisted that Amy sign a 31-page "Relationship Agreement." She also believes she and Penny are best friends, a sentiment Penny doesn't seem to share but respectfully indulges. Her admiration for Penny has at times bordered on attraction. Amy Fowler has a Ph.D. in neurobiology, while Bialik herself has a doctorate in neuroscience; in the season 1 episode "The Bat Jar Conjecture", Raj suggests recruiting the real-life Bialik to their Physics Bowl team.

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