Quick facts for kids The Big Bang Theory
Title screen
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Chuck Lorre Bill Prady
Directed by	Mark Cendrowski
Starring	Johnny Galecki Jim Parsons Kaley Cuoco Simon Helberg Kunal Nayyar Sara Gilbert Mayim Bialik Melissa Rauch Kevin Sussman Laura Spencer
Theme music composer	Barenaked Ladies
Opening theme	"Big Bang Theory Theme"
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	12
No. of episodes	279 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Chuck Lorre Bill Prady Lee Aronsohn Steven Molaro Eric Kaplan Maria Ferrari Dave Goetsch Steve Holland
Producer(s)	Faye Oshima Belyeu
Editor(s)	Peter Chakos
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	18–22 minutes
Production company(s)	Chuck Lorre Productions Warner Bros. Television
Release
Original network	CBS
Original release	September 24, 2007 (2007-09-24) – May 16, 2019 (2019-05-16)
Chronology
Related shows	Young Sheldon Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage

The Big Bang Theory is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for CBS. It aired from September 24, 2007, to May 16, 2019, running for 12 seasons and 279 episodes.

The show originally centered on five characters living in Pasadena, California: Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), both physicists at Caltech, who share an apartment; Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall; and Leonard and Sheldon's similarly geeky and socially awkward friends and coworkers, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar). Over time, supporting characters were promoted to starring roles, including neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik), microbiologist Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), and comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman).

The show was filmed in front of a live audience and produced by Chuck Lorre Productions, with Warner Bros. Television handling distribution. It received mixed reviews throughout its first season, but reception was more favorable in the second and third seasons. Despite early mixed reviews, seven seasons were ranked within the top ten of the final season ratings, and it ultimately reached the No. 1 spot in its eleventh season. It was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series from 2011 to 2014 and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series four times for Parsons, totaling seven Emmy Awards from 46 nominations. Parsons also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Comedy Series in 2011.

The series' success launched a multimedia franchise. A prequel series based on Parsons' character Sheldon Cooper, Young Sheldon, aired from 2017 to 2024, with Parsons as the narrating adult Sheldon. The third series in the franchise, a sequel series to Young Sheldon titled Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage, premiered in October 2024 and follows Sheldon's older brother, Georgie, and his wife, Mandy. A fourth series, following Stuart, his girlfriend Denise, and geologist Bert Kibbler, is in development for Max.

Cast and characters

Main characters in The Big Bang Theory season 6. First row from left: Rajesh Koothrappali, Leonard Hofstadter, Penny, Sheldon Cooper, and Howard Wolowitz. Second row from left: Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz and Amy Farrah Fowler.

• Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter: An experimental physicist with an IQ of 173, who received his Ph.D. when he was 24 years old. Leonard is a nerd who loves video games, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons. Leonard is the straight man of the series, sharing an apartment in Pasadena, CA, with Sheldon Cooper. Leonard is smitten with his new neighbor Penny when they first meet, and they eventually marry.
• Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper: Originally from Galveston, Texas, Sheldon was a child prodigy with an eidetic memory who began college at the age of eleven and earned a Ph.D. at age sixteen. He is a theoretical physicist researching quantum mechanics and string theory, and, despite his IQ of 187, he finds many routine aspects of social situations difficult to grasp. He is determined to have his own way, continually boasts of his intelligence, and has an extremely ritualized way of living. Despite these quirks, he begins a relationship with Amy Farrah Fowler, and they eventually marry.
• Kaley Cuoco as Penny: An aspiring actress from Omaha, Nebraska. Penny moves in across the hall from Sheldon and Leonard. She waits tables and occasionally tends the bar at The Cheesecake Factory. After giving up hope of becoming a successful actress, Penny becomes a pharmaceutical sales representative. Penny becomes friends with Bernadette and Amy, and they often hang out in each other's apartments. Penny and Leonard form a relationship and eventually marry.
• Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz: An aerospace engineer who got his master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Howard is Jewish and lived with his mother, Debbie (Carol Ann Susi). Unlike Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Bernadette, and Amy, Howard does not hold a doctorate. He trains as an astronaut and goes into space as a payload specialist on the International Space Station. Howard initially fancies himself as a ladies man, but he later starts dating Bernadette, and they get engaged and married. Howard also has a tendency to waste money on toys and argues with Bernadette because of his oddly low income as an engineer and her high income as a pharmaceutical biochemist.
• Kunal Nayyar as Rajesh Koothrappali: A particle astrophysicist originally from New Delhi, India.
• Sara Gilbert as Leslie Winkle (recurring season 1, starring season 2, guest seasons 3, 9): A physicist who works in the same lab as Leonard.
• Melissa Rauch as Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (recurring season 3, starring seasons 4–12): A young woman who initially is a co-worker at The Cheesecake Factory with Penny to pay her way through graduate school, where she is studying microbiology. Bernadette is introduced to Howard by Penny; at first, they do not get along, apparently having nothing in common. They date and later get engaged and married. Although generally a sweet and good-natured person, Bernadette has a short fuse and can be vindictive and lash out when provoked.
• Mayim Bialik as Amy Farrah Fowler (guest star season 3, starring seasons 4–12): A woman selected by an online dating site as Sheldon's perfect mate, Amy is from Glendale, California. While she and Sheldon initially share social cluelessness, after befriending Penny and Bernadette, she eventually becomes more interested in social and romantic interaction. Her relationship with Sheldon slowly progresses to the point where Sheldon considers her his girlfriend, and eventually, they get married. Amy believes she and Penny are best friends, a sentiment that Penny does not initially share. Amy has a Ph.D. in neurobiology.
• Kevin Sussman as Stuart Bloom (recurring seasons 2–5, 7, starring seasons 6, 8–12): A mild-mannered, under-confident owner of a comic book store. A competent artist, Stuart is a graduate of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Though he is socially awkward, he possesses slightly better social skills. Stuart implies he is in financial trouble and that the comic book store now also is his home. He is later invited to join the guys' group while Howard is in space. Stuart gets a new job caring for Howard's mother later. After Mrs. Wolowitz's death, Stuart continues to live in her home, along with Howard and Bernadette, until he finds a place of his own.
• Laura Spencer as Emily Sweeney (recurring seasons 7–8, 10, starring season 9): A dermatologist at Huntington Hospital. Emily went to Harvard and delights in the macabre, and she states that she likes her job because she can cut things with knives. Prior to meeting Raj, Emily was set up on a blind date with Howard. After finding Emily's online dating profile, Raj has Amy contact her as his wingman instead. Their relationship becomes exclusive, but Raj later breaks up with Emily when he becomes infatuated with Claire (Alessandra Torresani), a bartender and children's author.

Episodes

Production

Series' logo used for print

The show's pilot episode premiered on September 24, 2007. This was the second pilot produced for the show. A different pilot was produced for the 2006–07 television season but never aired. The structure of the original unaired pilot was different from the series' current form. The only main characters retained in both pilots were Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons), who are named after Sheldon Leonard, a longtime figure in episodic television as a producer, director, and actor. A minor character, Althea (Vernee Watson), appeared in the first scene of both pilots that was retained generally as-is. The first pilot included two female lead characters - Katie, "a street-hardened, tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior" (played by Canadian actress Amanda Walsh), and Gilda, a scientist colleague and friend of the male characters (played by Iris Bahr). Sheldon and Leonard meet Katie after she breaks up with a boyfriend, and they invite her to share their apartment. Gilda is threatened by Katie's presence. Test audiences reacted negatively to Katie, but they liked Sheldon and Leonard. The original pilot used Thomas Dolby's hit "She Blinded Me with Science" as its theme song.

Although the original pilot was not picked up, its creators were given an opportunity to retool it and produce a second pilot. They brought in the remaining cast and retooled the show to its final format. Katie was replaced by Penny (Kaley Cuoco). The original unaired pilot has never been officially released, but it has circulated on the Internet. On the evolution of the show, Chuck 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 the original pilot on a future DVD release, Lorre said, "Wow, that would be something. We will see. Show your failures..."

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 on September 24, 2007, and was picked up for a full 22-episode season on October 19, 2007. The show is filmed in front of a live audience, and it is produced by Chuck Lorre Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Production was halted on November 6, 2007, due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Nearly three months later, on February 4, 2008, the series was temporarily replaced by a short-lived sitcom, Welcome to The Captain. The series returned on March 17, 2008, in an earlier time slot, and ultimately only 17 episodes were produced for the first season.

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 in 2009. In 2011, the show was picked up for three more seasons. In March 2014, the show was renewed again for three more years through the 2016–17 season. This marked the second time the series gained a three-year renewal. In March 2017, the series was renewed for two additional seasons, bringing its total to 12, and running through the 2018–19 television season.

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

Science consultants

David Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, checked scripts and provided dialogue, mathematics equations, and diagrams used as props. According to series co-creator Bill Prady, Sheldon was given an actual equation to be worked on throughout the first season, with the actual progress displayed on whiteboards in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment. Saltzberg, who has a Ph.D. in physics, served as the science consultant for the show for six seasons and attended every taping. He saw early versions of scripts that needed scientific information added to them, and he also pointed out where the writers, despite their knowledge of science, had made a mistake. He was usually not needed during a taping unless a lot of science, and especially the whiteboard, was involved.

Saltzberg sometimes consulted with Mayim Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, on the subject of biology.

= Theme song

The Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies wrote and recorded the show's theme song, which describes the history and formation of the universe and the Earth. Co-lead singer Ed Robertson was asked by Lorre and Prady to write a theme song for the show after the producers attended one of the band's concerts in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, Robertson had recently read Simon Singh's 2004 book Big Bang, and at the concert he improvised a freestyle rap about the origins of the universe. Lorre and Prady phoned him shortly thereafter and asked him to write the theme song. Having been asked to write songs for other films and shows, but ending up being rejected because producers favored songs by other artists, Robertson agreed to write the theme only after learning that Lorre and Prady had not asked anyone else.

On October 9, 2007, a full-length (1 minute and 45 seconds) version of the song was released commercially. Although some unofficial pages identify the song title as "History of Everything," the cover art for the single identifies the title as "Big Bang Theory Theme." A music video also was released via special features on The Complete Fourth Season DVD and Blu-ray set. The theme was included on the band's greatest hits album, Hits from Yesterday & the Day Before, released on September 27, 2011. In September 2015, TMZ uncovered court documents showing that Steven Page sued former bandmate Robertson over the song, alleging that he was promised 20 percent of the proceeds, but that Robertson has kept that money for himself.

Vanity cards

Like most shows created by Chuck Lorre, The Big Bang Theory ends by showing for one second a vanity card written by Lorre after the credits, followed by the Warner Bros. Television closing logo. These cards are archived on Lorre's website. The series' final vanity card reads simply "The End".

Release

Broadcast

The Big Bang Theory premiered in the United States on September 24, 2007, on CBS. The series debuted in Canada on CTV in September 2007. On February 14, 2008, the series debuted in the United Kingdom on channels E4 and Channel 4. In Australia, the first seven seasons of the series began airing on the Seven Network and 7mate from October 2015 and also gained the rights to season 8 in 2016, although the Nine Network has rights to air seasons nine & ten. On January 22, 2018, it was announced that Nine had acquired the rights to Season 1–8.

Syndication and streaming

In May 2010, it was reported that the show had been picked up for syndication, mainly among Fox's owned and operated stations and other local stations, with Warner Bros. Television's sister cable network TBS holding the show's cable syndication rights. Although details of the syndication deal have not been revealed, it was reported the deal "set a record price for a cable off-network sitcom purchase".

On September 17, 2019, as part of an extension of the TBS agreement through 2028, Warner Bros.' then-upcoming streaming service HBO Max (now Max) acquired the exclusive American streaming rights to the series. In December 2024, it was announced that CBS parent company Paramount Global had acquired non-exclusive cable rights to The Big Bang Theory for Nick at Nite and MTV, beginning December 24, 2024 and January 1, 2025 respectively; Deadline Hollywood reported that the current contract with TBS had made the linear television rights non-exclusive, allowing them to be shared with other broadcasters. Beginning in 2025 The Big Bang Theory was made available on Disney+ in certain regions via the Star hub alongside its spin-off Young Sheldon in an unprecedented move.

Home media

The first and second seasons were only available on DVD at their time of release in 2008 and 2009. Starting with the release of the third season in 2010 and continuing every year with every new season, a Blu-ray disc set has also been released in conjunction with the DVD. In 2012, Warner Bros. released the first two seasons on Blu-ray, marking the first time that all episodes were available on the Blu-ray disc format.

Merchandise

On March 16, 2014, a Lego Ideas project portraying the living room scene in Lego style with the main cast as mini-figures reached 10,000 supporters on the platform, which qualified it to be considered as an official set by the Lego Ideas review board. On November 7, 2014, Lego Ideas approved the design and began refining it. The set was released in August 2015, with an exclusive pre-sale taking place at San Diego Comic-Con.

Spin-offs

Young Sheldon

In November 2016, it was reported that CBS was in negotiations to create a spin-off of The Big Bang Theory centered on Sheldon as a young boy. The prequel series, described as "a Malcolm in the Middle-esque single-camera family comedy" would be executive-produced by Lorre and Molaro, with Prady expected to be involved in some capacity, and intended to air in the 2017–18 season alongside The Big Bang Theory. The initial idea for the series came from Parsons, who passed it along to The Big Bang Theory producers. In early March 2017, Iain Armitage was cast as the younger Sheldon, as well as Zoe Perry as his mother, Mary Cooper. Perry is the real-life daughter of Laurie Metcalf, who portrays Mary Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.

On March 13, 2017, CBS ordered the spin-off Young Sheldon series. Jon Favreau directed and executive produced the pilot. Created by Lorre and Molaro, the series follows 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper as he attends high school in East Texas. Alongside Armitage as 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper and Perry as Mary Cooper, Lance Barber stars as George Cooper, Sheldon's father; Raegan Revord stars as Missy Cooper, Sheldon's twin sister; and Montana Jordan stars as George Cooper Jr., Sheldon's older brother. Jim Parsons reprises his role as adult Sheldon Cooper, as narrator for the series. Parsons, Lorre, Molaro and Todd Spiewak also serve as executive producers on the series, for Chuck Lorre Productions and Warner Bros. Television. The show's pilot episode premiered on September 25, 2017. Subsequent weekly episodes began airing on November 2, 2017, following the broadcast of the 237th episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Armitage appeared on the series' 265th episode, "The VCR Illumination", by way of a videotape recorded by the younger Sheldon and viewed by the current-day Sheldon.

On January 6, 2018, the show was renewed for a second season. On February 22, 2019, CBS renewed the series for both the third and fourth seasons. On March 30, 2021, CBS renewed the series for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season.

The prequel series came to an end on May 16, 2024, with an hour long episode which included George Cooper's funeral and a cameo from Parsons and Mayim Bialik as their older characters. The audience learns that Young Sheldon has been a memoir of Sheldon's life all along.

Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage

In January 2024, it was announced that there will be a spin-off series of Young Sheldon focused on Georgie Cooper and Mandy McAllister that will be slated for the 2024–25 season on CBS.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe

On April 12, 2023, it was announced that a spin-off of the original series was in development. On October 10, 2024, it was announced that the third spin-off will feature Stuart Bloom, Denise, and Bert Kibbler, with Kevin Sussman, Lauren Lapkus, and Brian Posehn reprising their roles. On March 19, 2025, it was announced that the title of the show will be Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.

Television special

On May 16, 2019, a television special titled Unraveling the Mystery: A Big Bang Farewell aired following the series finale of The Big Bang Theory. It is a backstage retrospective featuring Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco.

See also

In Spanish: The Big Bang Theory para niños