Even neuroscientist Mayim Bialik can’t explain ‘Big Bang’ popularity

The most watched TV show in Canada — by far — is “The Big Bang Theory.” It has been topping weekly Canadian ratings charts for years.

The six-year-old CBS sitcom regularly draws between 3.5 and 4 million viewers a week Thursdays at 8 p.m. on CTV. The Canadian network also airs reruns of “The Big Bang Theory” weeknights during the supper hour. Those reruns outdraw much of what is seen in prime time across all networks in Canada.

CTV is even using the series to sway viewers away from CBC during the hockey stoppage. Saturday marathons of the comedy were being billed as “Big Bang Night in Canada” until CBC complained. They are currently outdrawing CBC’s “Your Pick” classic hockey reruns by more than a five-to-one margin.

The series is also a popular draw on CTV’s specialty channel The Comedy Network.

Usually when a network over-uses a series to this extent it drives it into the ground. The famous example is “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire,” a runaway success in the ‘90s until ABC started airing it four nights a week across its schedule.

Yet “Big Bang” remains bullet proof. Why can’t Canadians get enough of it?

The question was put to an actual neuroscientist: Mayim Bialik. She also happens to star on the series as Sheldon’s brilliant but frustrated girlfriend Amy.

“I think they’re laughing at us, that’s the problem,” she deadpanned at a CBS press party held at the most recent Television Critics Association gathering in Los Angeles.

Doing dead pan is a Bialik specialty. The 36-year-old has been using that acting trick ever since her days as a child star on the early ‘90s sitcom “Blossom.”

Bialik really has no idea why the series gets a bigger bang in Canada.

“The Canadian and United States sense of humour is similar,” she observes. “I don’t think there’s anything mystical about that.

“Maybe,” she speculates, “people are more inclined to like nerdy people in Canada.”

It may also help that the series’ theme song is performed by the nerdiest of Canadian bands, the Barenaked Ladies.

Bialik joined “The Big Bang Theory” at the tail end of Season Three as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, playing the “friend that’s a girl, not a girlfriend” to brainy fuss pot Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons). At first a recurring character, she became a regular half way through the fourth season. Last season she earned a best supporting Emmy nomination.

“I was not at all thinking I was going to be a regular on a TV show,” says Bialik, who confined her acting work to cartoon voice overs and guest roles after “Blossom” folded in 1995.

“I had never heard of ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ I didn’t watch TV, I don’t watch TV.”

For much of the last decade, Bialik was more focused on studies than sitcoms. Accepted at both Harvard and Yale, she chose to stick close to home and pursue her degrees at UCLA. That’s where she completed her doctorate in neuroscience in 2007.

Married with two children, she’s also written a book on child rearing: “Beyond the Sling: A Real Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way.”

One thing her kids — ages seven and four — are not attached to is television. The oldest saw his first TV this summer during the Olympics. Neither has seen “Big Bang” or “Blossom.”

“When they’re closer to my age I was when (‘Blossom’) happened, that will be much more acceptable to them,” she says, sounding a lot like Dr. Amy.

Bialik was barely a teen when she shot the pilot for “Blossom.”

TV was very much a part of her upbringing.

“I grew up with some of the best and worst sitcoms of the ‘80s,” she says.

“I loved ‘The Cosby Show.’ Every Saturday night, since I had no social life, I watched ‘227′ and ‘The Golden Girls’ and ‘Empty Nest’ — all the way through junior high.”

All that exposure to the boob tube didn’t seem to rot her brain —or kill her TV career.

___

Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.