A couple of seasons ago, with the demise of long-running shows such as "Friends," "Frasier" and "Everybody Loves Raymond," the traditional TV sitcom was all but declared dead.

After 50-plus years of "I Love Lucy"-style staging and pacing, audiences were burnt out on four-camera, studio audience shows, or so went the conventional wisdom. One-camera-filmed comedies, such as "The Office," "My Name Is Earl" and "30 Rock," were the only way to hook today's savvy, seen-it-all viewers.

Wrong. Traditional sitcoms "Two and a Half Men," "How I Met Your Mother" and CBS newcomer "The Big Bang Theory" - which all just returned this week with new, post-strike episodes - are among TV's top-rated comedies in the U.S. (although in Canada, the one-camera comedy "Corner Gas" continues to lead in the ratings).

The fact that people are still laughing at studio audience sitcoms doesn't surprise Chuck Lorre, the creator/producer of two of those hits, "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory."

"I grew up in the business," Lorre said at the last Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Lorre started out writing for forgettable sitcoms such as "My Two Dads" before going on to write and produce on "Roseanne" and "Grace Under Fire." After surviving two of the most volatile personalities in show business, Roseanne Barr and Brett Butler, Lorre created his own sitcoms "Dharma & Greg" and "Two and a Half Men."

"I learned how to do this working four-camera comedy shows," he said. "I'd love to try the other approach sometime but it just hasn't worked out that way."

Besides, said Lorre, 55, "this is kind of exciting. You come to the show on Friday night and there are 200 people sitting there waiting to be entertained. You find out real quick if you're as funny as you think you are."

Johnny Galecki, who plays one of the two "Big Bang" brainiacs named Sheldon and Leonard (a nod to the famed "Dick Van Dyke Show" producer Sheldon Leonard), agreed that playing before an audience makes a difference.

"A studio audience always guides a pace or mood or an energy, and they're a palpable character in the room," said Galecki, who worked with Lorre as Darlene's boyfriend on "Roseanne" and who spent the last few years developing as an actor on Broadway stages.

Lorre said the studio sitcom audience "creates a theatre experience for the actors." When it works and the audience is laughing, "it is the best," he said. And when they're not laughing and it's not working, "you can hear your career go by."

He calls it "theatre with do-overs." If an actor muffs a line, or a gag really bombs, adjustments can be made on the spot and the scene shot again. It's not like the studio audience is going to get up and walk away. Some sitcom tapings take over four hours to tape a 22-minute episode.

"Big Bang" co-star Kaley Cuoco said she learned a lot playing opposite sitcom veteran John Ritter on "Eight Simple Rules."

"Every take was different," she said of Ritter. "Every time he did it, you didn't know how he was going to do it. He made the audience want to keep watching."

Other networks besides CBS seem to be getting back into the traditional sitcom business. Fox's "'Til Death" and "Back to You" are trying to re-establish themselves with new episodes in the wake of the strike. (Both comedies return April 16.)

"It's sort of become cool to trash the sitcom," Steve Levitan, co-creator of "Back to You," said when the show was introduced to the media last summer.

He grew up watching "Dick Van Dyke," "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Cheers," and said "they were incredibly important shows for me. And I know it's not cool to love them, but I do love them."

He also noted how his own children embrace shows such as "Hannah Montana" and "Zach & Cody," which are both shot as traditional sitcoms, "and they're not saying, 'Well, it's cooler to love single camera.' "

Besides, said Levitan, if you have two of the top sitcom stars ever in Kelsey Grammer ("Cheers," "Frasier") and Patricia Heaton ("Everybody Loves Raymond"), "why not let them do what they do best?"

As Heaton said, "it's not about whether there's cameras or audience or whatever. What it boils down to is, is this character interesting to you, and do you see five, seven years' worth of stories here?"

Grammer was more succinct. When asked it he considered his new show to be a traditional TV comedy, he simply said, "If by traditional you mean funny, yes, it's very traditional."

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