We've all got shows that we don't quite get. I know people who can't figure out why everyone loves Breaking Bad, or who misunderstand The Returned so completely that I suspect they're doing it deliberately just to annoy me.
My own blind spot happens to be The Big Bang Theory, which is a shame because at times it feels like I'm the only person on the face of the planet who doesn't love it wholeheartedly. God knows I've tried. I gave it a shot back when the first series aired in the UK. Then, a few years ago during an ill-fated stint running E4's Facebook page – one that ended by mutual consent after I started correcting the grammar of the page's followers – I saw how insanely popular The Big Bang Theory was and gave it another shot, to no avail. Even now, from time to time, I'll force myself to sit through one of E4's omnipresent Big Bang marathons. And every single time it'll leave me cold.
There's a reason why E4 seems determined to stuff its schedules stupid with The Big Bang Theory. The last time a new episode aired, it was the most-watched non-sports show on a digital channel by about half a million viewers. In America, it's such a ratings steamroller that CBS can charge almost £200,000 for a single 30-second advertising spot. TV bosses are so confident it still has mileage, they've commissioned three more series. It is, by all estimations, a sensation.
And this is why I'm so annoyed that I don't get it. Admittedly I didn't get Two and a Half Men – which shares a showrunner, Chuck Lorre, with The Big Bang Theory – even at the height of its pomp, but that was much easier to understand. That wasn't my fault. That was, and is, a bad television programme; a string of softball, low-energy wisecracks performed by uninterested millionaires to an audience of whooping nimrods who just tuned in to see which minor celebrity could be most easily coerced into running around in her bra that week.
But The Big Bang Theory is supposed to be better than that. It's supposed to be full of jokes about science and maths and fandoms that appeal to the marginalised among us. Perhaps that's why it annoys me so much. Unlike, say, Futurama – which would delight in dropping in unexplained references to binary code and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and let viewers figure it out – The Big Bang Theory doesn't feel like a TV show for geeks. It's a TV show about geeks, pitched squarely at an audience that occasionally likes to think it's geeky because it went to see Thor 2. To my mind, it's hard to get past the idea that The Big Bang Theory is the televisual equivalent of those NERD T-shirts you can buy in Primark. Plus the theme tune's awful. And Chuck Lorre's vanity cards make me want to kill things.
But, look, I'm obviously in the wrong here. Everyone else loves The Big Bang Theory so, please, use the comments to help me understand what I'm missing. I don't get it right now, but I'm more than willing to have my mind changed. That said, say "Bazinga!" even once and I'm coming for you.
The Big Bang Theory, Thursdays, 8pm, E4.
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