The immense amount of television cycling through networks and streamers can feel overwhelming. With so much to choose from, there’s nothing worse than putting precious hours into a series that’s just not worth the mental real estate. Part of a critic’s job is to recommend the cream of the crop, of course. But the flip side of that obligation is the need to spare others our disappointments.
Our list of the year’s worst TV shows includes several reboots and remakes, highlighting why Hollywood desperately needs to embrace new ideas and lesser-known creators. There are also promising premises that failed to make the most of their stars and high concepts. As the year ends, Variety TV critics Aramide Tinubu and Alison Herman have identified 10 series that probably aren’t worth your time — but if you love a good hate-watch, of course, have at it! (Click here to jump to Alison Herman’s list.)
Aramide Tinubu’s 5 Worst TV Shows
5. “Land of Women” (Apple TV+)
Adapted from Sandra Barneda’s bestselling novel of the same name, Apple TV+’s “Land of Women” follows Gala Scott (Eva Longoria), a New York socialite whose life takes a sharp turn when her husband abandons her to avoid paying a massive debt. Fearing for her life, Gala, her mother, Julia (Carmen Maura, and her 17-year-old daughter, Kate (Victoria Bazua), escape to Julia’s hometown of La Muga, a tiny town in Northern Spain. While the series has decent bones, primarily when it details Julia’s past, the Hallmark-like narrative is tediously predictable and overly melodramatic. By the time it ends, viewers likely won’t care what happens to Gala, her conniving husband — or anyone else. (Link to full review.)
4. “Cruel Intentions” (Prime Video)
Hollywood is still in the habit of smacking viewers in the face with reboots. While there have been some major successes, Prime Video’s TV adaptation of “Cruel Intentions” is not one of them. Set on the fictional Manchester College campus, the series follows volatile stepsiblings Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess). Like the 1999 film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon, the series revolves around a bet. Caroline is determined to preserve the school’s fledgling Greek life, so she entices Lucien to convince freshman Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith), who happens to be the daughter of the vice president of the United States, to join her sorority. If Lucien delivers Annie to Caroline, he will get something he’s always coveted: sex with his stepsister. Unfortunately, in a post-#MeToo era, “Cruel Intentions” feels stale, outdated and rather bizarre. It neither speaks to the current generation of college students nor adds anything new to the original story. (Link to full review.)
3. “The Creep Tapes” (Shudder/AMC+)
Following the success of their cult classic horror films “Creep” and “Creep 2,” Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice returned to the franchise for Shudder/AMC+’s six-episode series, “The Creep Tapes.” Like the films, the series follows serial killer Peachfuzz (Duplass) as he lures in and then massacres his unsuspecting victims. Unfortunately, a lack of character development and a recycled found-footage format make for more boredom than scares. The series is neither engaging nor frightening. (Link to full review.)
2. “Universal Basic Guys” (Fox)
Like any other genre, adult animation has a number of sharp, stunning series — and quite a few duds. Fox’s new animated series, “Universal Basic Guys,” falls into the latter category. Created by real-life siblings Adam and Craig Malamut, the series follows brothers Mark and Hank Hoagies (both voiced by Adam Malamut) living on a $3,000 monthly income after being laid off from the local hot dog factory in their hometown of Glantontown, N.J. The show follows the men as they spend their days moving through various scenarios and spending their dough. But that’s about as interesting as the series gets. Packed with moronic and stale jokes, “Universal Basic Guys” centers on confoundingly insufferable and ignorant men whose crassness never crosses over into the humorous. (Link to full review.)
1. “Good Times” (Netflix)
Perhaps one of the most baffling and outrageously bad television series in recent years is Netflix’s mind-numbing animated series, “Good Times.” When the original show premiered in 1974, it became the first to depict a two-parent Black American family, and though the animated series created by Ranada Shepard keeps this same structure, it is stuffed full of repetitive stereotypes, stale jokes and bizarre choices. It became abundantly clear upon viewing why Netflix refused to send out screeners for review. It depicts Chicago as a dilapidated, bullet-riddled city, with the new generation of Evanses living in the apartment in the Cabrini Green projects. (The last of those highrises were actually demolished in 2011.) From a singing roach (played by Jimmie Walker, who played J.J. in the original series) to a drug-dealing baby, the series reduces Black people to a one-dimensional minstrel show. (Link to full review.)
Alison Herman’s 5 Worst TV Shows
5. “Before” (Apple TV+)
It’s not unusual for comedians to attempt dramatic gravitas and fall woefully short. What elevates — or maybe descends — “Before” into the exceptionally awful is how the Billy Crystal drama turned its central mystery into a torturous crawl through a miserably gray version of Brooklyn. What little intrigue there is in Crystal’s widowed psychologist finding himself drawn to maladjusted young boy is quickly lost in a sea of repetitive wallowing. When patently absurd answers finally arrive, the viewer is too bored to feel even mild amusement, let alone satisfaction. (Link to full review.)
4. “Sausage Party: Foodtopia” (Amazon Prime Video)
The first word that comes to mind when describing this animated prequel series, arriving nearly a decade after the original film, is “crude.” That doesn’t just describe the humor, though it’s true the incessant sex-and-food puns wear out their welcome over eight episodes, but the animation — blocky, garish and the opposite of immersive. With the Apple TV+ series “Palm Royale” and the upcoming “The Studio,” Seth Rogen and Kristen Wiig are well into their prestige eras. As voice actors in this Amazon Prime Video clunker, which Rogen co-created, they’re stuck in the joylessly juvenile past. (Link to full review.)
3. “Sugar” (Apple TV+)
There are some who defend this Colin Farrell neo-noir, which certainly swings for the fences with a twist that recasts its clichéd plot and protagonist as a kind of meta-commentary on the genre. But the revelation that Farrell’s freelance fixer is — spoiler alert — an alien from outer space mostly just confirms that his detective work wasn’t worth taking seriously. The show “Sugar” transforms into for its episodes may be much more interesting than the one that preceded them, but the discordance between the two proves too great. Season 1 fails to cohere into a sensical whole; perhaps Season 2, however shocking its existence, will go down smoother. (Link to full review.)
2. “The Girls on the Bus” (Max)
A girl-power politics show released in an election year was likely doomed from the start. But “The Girls on the Bus,” a misbegotten fusion of CW-style froth and real-life reporting experience, made a bad situation worse. Why does Melissa Benoist’s heroine commune with the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson? How does this show expect us to react to a sympathetic Fox News type in 2024? Who was crying out for a fictionalized retelling of the 2020 Democratic primary? With its cancellation, these questions about “The Girls on the Bus” will remain unresolved, but they linger on the mind long after the actual storylines. (Link to full review.)
1. “The New Look” (Apple TV+)
Shows about fashion designers formed a mini-trend this year, but this Apple TV+ drama started the streak on a sour note. Despite centering itself around how Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) and Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) experienced World War II, “The New Look” seemed to have zero interest in its protagonists’ artistry, turning iconoclastic innovators into generic mopes. Mendelsohn made no sense as a wunderkind of French haute couture, while Binoche was unable to reconcile the contradictions of a script reluctant to take a firm stance on her character’s Nazism. “The New Look” didn’t seem to care much for fashion itself, let alone make the case for why viewers should want to learn more. (Link to full review.)
