Charlie Sheen is back

The actual Charlie Sheen effect was in full force Monday night, helping deliver record ratings to more than one channel.

After Sheen seized handle of entertainment news headlines with his well-documented and extremely tumultuous exit from “Two and also the Half Men,” most people wondered what would be the actual fate of your star plus his hit sitcom. And despite the seeming Sheen-fatigue which settled in around the particular time of his “Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour, this week’s Nielsen ratings seem to indicate in which America still has an interest in your story.

In the particular first episode of the actual post-Sheen era, “Two as well as some sort of Half Men” posted your series high with a total of 28 million viewers tuning in. Sheen’s replacement, Ashton Kutcher, played a new heartbroken billionaire and got the good response to the start of his tenure on the show. Despite this change, your occasionally womanizing nature of the actual show remained intact, as Kutcher’azines character was part of any threesome by this episode’ohydrates end. The actual season premiere also featured a new funeral for the Charlie Harper character, who was described as dying like an “exploding meat balloon.”

The “Men” season premiere experienced the particular highest ratings of any sitcom since this series finale of Everybody Loves Raymond drew 32 million viewers in 2005. A episode drew fewer people than last May’ersus “American Idol” finale (29 million viewers), but whereas “Idol” scored your 9.2 rating among adults 18 to 49, “Men” has a massive 10.3 rating. A show’ohydrates ratings were so strong that this “2 Broke Girls” series premiere immediately afterward lost 40 percent of a “Men” audience and yet still managed to become a highest-rated series premiere since NBC’utes short-lived 2001 series “Inside Schwartz.”

Later that will night your Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen scored a cable channel its highest ratings in almost three years. The particular broadcast, hosted by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, brought in 6.4 million viewers plus an impressive 4.5 rating in adults 18-49, far above this 3.5 million as well as 2.2 ratings for a Roast of Donald Trump earlier this year. In fact, the particular Roast of Charlie Sheen experienced this second highest ratings in Comedy Central’utes history, more than your 6.2 million who tuned in for this Roast of Jeff Foxworthy in 2005, and also only falling short of this 6.8 million viewers of which watched ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’ohydrates 2008 Christmas Special.

The particular high Roast ratings come amid any substantial image rehabilitation attempt by Sheen and his people. In an effort to clean up this oft-troubled star’s perception, Sheen laid low for a couple months before agreeing to present Best Actor in a new Comedy Series at last weekend’utes Emmy awards. He showed up clean-shaven in addition to coherent, the drastic change from the particular Twitter-friendly ramblings he was known for earlier this year. The actual star even posed for any photo backstage with Ashton Kutcher and also wished the actual newest “Two in addition to a Half Men” actor good luck on his Twitter page.

This image revamp comes on a heels of Lionsgate TV announcing their plans to develop your sitcom around Charlie Sheen, based on this 2003 Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson comedy “Anger Management” (Sheen would play the particular Nicholson role of a crazy counselor). Months ago it was hard to imagine the network taking the risk of hiring a new drugged-up actor with the $125 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. TV hanging over him. But now, as Sheen seems close to the $25 million settlement with WBTV, Lionsgate has begun preparations to shop their Sheen series to the particular various channels. The actor appears to be clean and also professional, the type of person of which the studio executive would be willing to make some sort of commitment to. With veteran show-runner Bruce Helford (The particular Drew Carey Show, George Lopez) now attached to the project, an Anger Management sitcom starring Charlie Sheen seems like your significantly more realistic proposition than when your news first surfaced.