Young Sheldon Gets Full-Season Order After Huge Debut

CBS has given The Big Bang Theory spin-off Young Sheldon a full-season order, the network announced Wednesday. The hasty pickup comes less than 48 hours after Young Sheldon's very successful premiere.

Young Sheldon was the most-watched comedy premiere on any network since 2 Broke Girls in 2011, pulling an audience of 17.21m viewers. It earned a 3.8 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic, the highest rating for any new comedy since The Crazy Onesin 2013. And perhaps most remarkably, it retained an astonishing 98% of its Big Bang viewer lead-in. That's the highest retention percentage of any of the myriad comedies launched in the valuable post-Big Bang slot. The Big Bang Theory's Season 11 premiere averaged a 4.1 rating in the key demo and 17.7 million viewers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

CBS probably wishes it could air a new episode of Young Sheldon every week, but the next episode won't air until the series' Thursday timeslot premiere in early November.

Young Sheldon stars Big Little Lies' Iain Armitage as 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper, the character played by Jim Parsons on The Big Bang Theory, and follows his trials and tribulations as a boy genius in an anti-intellectual East Texas town in 1989. It co-stars Zoe Perry and Lance Barber and is executive-produced by The Big Bang Theory's Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro as well as Parsons and Todd Spiewak.

Young Sheldon returns Thursday, Nov. 2 at 8:30/7:30c on CBS.

(Full disclosure: TV Guide is owned by CBS.)