CBS has announced that The Big Bang Theory spinoff Young Sheldon has been ordered straight to series for the 2017-18 season.
Young Sheldon is the network’s first series order for next season, joining NCIS as the only CBS scripted series to get the golden ticket to 2017-18 so far, and one of a handful of straight to series orders/revivals that the broadcast networks have ordered. Joining Young Sheldon in that category are FOX’s Orville, a Seth MacFarlane sci-fi dramedy set about a space ship and starring the likes of Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) and Scott Grimes (American Dad!); NBC procedural Gone, starring Sex and the City‘s Chris Noth; NBC’s Will & Grace revival; and ABC’s Inhumans, the latest in Marvel’s ever-expanding scripted brand.
Young Sheldon arrives at a time when broadcast networks are fully embracing both intellectual property and spinoffs, as it’s becoming harder for shows without pre-existing awareness to break through the clutter. This development season alone, we’ve seen spinoffs planned for The Big Bang Theory, The Goldbergs, and Black-ish, with the fifth show in NBC’s Chicago-verse (Chicago Justice) and CBS’s acclaimed Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight having recently launched and the likes of The Originals, The CW’s DC-verse, and CBS’s NCIS trio all among the spinoffs/franchises populating the broadcast airwaves this season.
From Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro, Young Sheldon follows The Big Bang Theory breakout character Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) as a 9-year-old living in Texas with his devoutly religious mother and going to high school. Though Parsons won’t be appearing on camera in the spinoff, he’s set to narrate the show, with Iain Armitage (Big Little Lies) to play 9-year-old Sheldon.
In addition to Armitage, Young Sheldon, which will differ from The Big Bang Theory in that it’s a single cam, stars Zoe Perry (The Family), Lance Barber (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Raegen Revord (Modern Family), and Montana Jordan (The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter).
