Young Sheldon S05 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DDP5.1 H.264-NTb
For 9-year-old Sheldon Cooper, it isn't easy growing up in East Texas. Being a once-in-a-generation mind capable of advanced mathematics and science isn't always helpful in a land where church and football are king. And while the vulnerable, gifted and somewhat naïve Sheldon deals with the world, his very normal family must find a way to deal with him.
Genre: Comedy
Stars: Zoe Perry, Raegan Revord, Iain Armitage, Montana Jordan, Rex Linn, Melissa Tang, Marcia Ann Burrs, Jim Parsons, J. Doc Farrow, Lance Barber
Young Sheldon review: he's an irritating little smartypants - but he's headed for something Big one day
There are plenty of laughs in this prequel to The Big Bang Theory, but the emotional punches are only threatened, and never land
@samwollaston
Fri 23 Feb 2018 06.00 GMT
East Texas, 1989, and a nine-year-old boy is playing with his train set. Not so much for the love of trains but because it allows him to demonstrate Newton's first law of motion, that an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by another force. This little boy will become a physicist one day.
"e;Dinner's ready,"e; the boy's mum calls out. He doesn't go down, until his twin sister threatens to lick his toothbrush if he doesn't. He has a thing about cleanliness: he puts on mittens before holding hands with his family to thank God for the food they are about to receive (Mum's into Him - God, that is).
The rest of the family is normal enough. Mum likes church, Dad likes beer, older brother likes football, twin sister likes watching TV. They all like tater tots (something people eat in east Texas).
The boy is contemptuous of his family. "e;It was family dinners like this that led me to adopt a mid-Atlantic accent,"e; the narrator says. "e;Nobel prize-winners ought not to be ordering tater tots."e;
Who is this annoying, precocious child? He's Young Sheldon, who will become Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. You probably recognised the narrator, Jim Parsons's, voice. You probably already knew what this was before you started watching it, to be honest. You may well be whatever a TBBT fan is called. Big Banger? Bazingarist?
Yes, it is a prequel - like Better Call Saul or The Wide Sargasso Sea, although you might argue that it is born of less pedigree stock. Parsons narrates, from the future. Young Sheldon is played by Big Little Lies' Iain Armitage. Rather well - you can certainly see the person he will turn into, as well as wanting to clap him and tell him to shut up at the same time.
Unsurprisingly, for Sheldon's new high school classmates, all of whom are several years older than he is (older brother is among them), it's more about wanting to do the latter. Sheldon is an irritating little smartypants, constantly pointing out infringements of school regulations and showing off how much more he knows than his teachers.
The most interesting casting is Zoe Perry as Sheldon's mum. Perry is the real-life daughter of Laurie Metcalf, who plays the same character's older self in The Big Bang Theory. She also thoroughly convinces - there's something similar (DNA most likely) about the way they look and speak and behave. She is also the most interesting character here, struggling to know how to deal with her prodigiously talented child while at the same time harbouring a mother's protective instincts.
There's a bit of that going on - how hard it is for parents to deal with genius offspring (very hard, ask my mum). I hope that will be further explored: it's interesting and will help to differentiate it from its parent show.
Its retroness also sets it apart, not just in the period detail - the hair, Dire Straits on the soundtrack - but in the whole nostalgic feel of it, the quirky 80s family sitcom.
Studio audience laughter has been done away with, though, and that's a good thing. There are fewer gags than in TBBT: it's not that relentless onslaught - keep 'em coming until they surrender and damn well laugh. That is also a relief, although it doesn't yet quite know how to fill the spaces meaningfully. So far any emotional punch is only threatened, not landed.
And the jokes, when they do come, are in the same vein as the ones in Big Bang: geeks, oversimplified ones, are funny - the things that they do, and say, and wear. Young Sheldon wants to wear a bow tie to his first day at high school. In class, he points out that a girl is wearing a diaphanous blouse, which means that it is see-through and he can see her bra. When can he expect his testicles to drop, he asks his mother, loudly, in church ...
Is that funny? If you are a Big Banger, or a Bazingarist, or whatever, maybe it is. Humour, tastes, subjectiveness, blah. I don't think it's smart enough. Young Sheldon the character might be genius offspring, Young Sheldon the show, not yet. Could do better.
General
Complete name: Young.Sheldon.S05E01.One.Bad.Night.and.Chaos.of.Selfish.Desires.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
Format : Matroska
Duration : 21 min 20 s
Video
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec: Bit rate : 5 870 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Audio
Format/Info : Enhanced Audio Coding 3
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Language : English
Subtitles : English, English SDH
Screens
