Up to and through the 1990s, multi-camera sitcoms with studio audiences were such a standard that even animated series occasionally featured canned laugh tracks. The exact opposite is the case in 2024, where current examples number in the single digits, but the Young Sheldon spinoff Georgie & Maddie’s First Marriage will be among them when the Big Bang Theory prequel hits the 2024 TV schedule this fall. And co-creators Chuck Lorre and Steve Holland don’t sound the least bit worried about embracing a sitcom format some consider “dead.
” Speaking at length about CBS’ upcoming comedy for the first time as part of the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour (via Deadline ), Holland and Lorre addressed the fact that Georgie & Mandy will return to the live-audience format that CBS has almost single-handedly kept going over the years. Speaking to decades of multi-cam naysayers, Holland said: We’ve done this long enough and heard multiple times that multi-camera sitcoms are dead. Before The Big Bang Theory, people liked to make these predictions but all it takes is something the audience connects with and it’s not true anymore.
Regardless of one’s personal sitcom preferences, it’s hard to deny the logic in Holland’s argument. A show’s success depends almost entirely on how well the cast and storyline can each connect with TV audiences, regardless of the specific way that show is presented. Or else traditional sitcoms would have failed entirely after .