The 50 worst TV shows of all time, according to critics
1. "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" (Fox News, Season 1)
2. "Dads" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 15/100
User score: 3.7/10
What critics said: "A crass generation-gap sitcom with the wit if not the intelligence of an elementary-school flatulence contest." — Miami Herald
3. "Stalker" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 17/100
User score: 7.4/10
What critics said: "The violence, creepiness and depravity appear to be the point, because nothing of value is offered in balance.... It's unforgivable." — Los Angeles Times
4. "Category 7: The End of the World" (CBS, Mini-Series)
Critic score: 18/100
User score: 3.7/10
What critics said: "Here's an early candidate for worst miniseries of the 21st Century." — Detroit Free Press
5. "Work It" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 19/100
User score: 1.1/10
What critics said: "'Work It' is dreadful almost beyond comprehension: witless, tasteless, poorly acted, abominably written, clumsily directed, hideously lit and badly costumed." — USA Today
6. "Cavemen" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 19/100
User score: 5.2/10
What critics said: "'Cavemen,' is pretty bad. It's definitely among the stalest pieces of bread in the loaf, which already includes 'Two and a Half Men' and 'According to Jim.' And it's certainly the most tasteless." — Boston Globe
7. "The Real Wedding Crashers" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 19/100
User score: 4.3/10
What critics said: "An HD broadcast: Hugely Dumb." — The Washington Post
8. "Momma's Boys" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 19/100
User score: 4.3/10
What critics said: "Executive produced by Ryan Seacrest, this sucking wound of a show introduces three guys and their moms who move into a house filled with women." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
9. "Knight Rider" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 21/100
User score: 6.0/10
What critics said: "[An] almost hilariously cheesy remake of the David Hasselhoff original." — Chicago Tribune
10. "Uncle Buck" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 21/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "The jokes are obvious, the situations cliched, the characters obnoxious. Would you believe a lecherous insurance agent named Doreen Douche?" — Newsday
11. "Sons of Hollywood" (A&E, Season 1)
Critic score: 21/100
User score: 3.9/10
What critics said: "Once again, reality TV invites us to marvel at the idiocy, futility, and self-destructive tendencies of the rich and famous. But this petty, home-movie-level material wouldn't even fly on YouTube." — Boston Globe
12. "Do Not Disturb" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 21/100
User score: 3.5/10
What critics said: "This is a show that could bury the [sitcom] genre altogether." — The Hollywood Reporter
13. "The Game" (The CW/BET, Season 1)
Critic score: 22/100
User score: 8.2/10
What critics said: "It just isn't funny. At all. Ever." — USA Today
14. "Identity" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 22/100
User score: 8.4/10
What critics said: "Now, you may be saying, 'There he goes again, that elitist toad.' But believe me, even Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Bill O'Reilly would think this show was stupid." — Philadelphia Inquirer
15. "October Road" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 23/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: "This wretched show not only features a lead character who is an unredeemable nitwit but dialogue that manages to be leaden, preposterous and pretentious all at once." — Chicago Tribune
16. "I Wanna Marry Harry" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 23/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: "Instead of just creating the horror show that is 12 women competing for a man, it chooses also to play them for fools." — The AV Club
17. "10.5 Apocalypse" (NBC, Mini-Series)
Critic score: 23/100
User score: 4.2/10
What critics said: "The calamities and catastrophes occur with such frequency and ferocity that, yes, indeed, 'Apocalypse 10.5' suffers the curse of being unintentionally funny — even hilarious." — The Washington Post
18. "Modern Men" (WB, Season 1)
19. "Woops!" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 24/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "It could have been the funniest show in the world, if there was a nuclear war, really, and this was the only one show left. 'Woops!' is moronic on so many levels." — Newsday
20. "Unan1mous" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 24/100
User score: 3.1/10
What critics said: "Makes a solid bid to win the Most Unpleasant Reality Show of All Time award." — Miami Herald
21. "Killer Instinct" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: 8.5/10
What critics said: "You won't see any worse acting across the broadcast spectrum. The women-in-peril scenes are vile. The writing is atrocious. The series is horrifically bad." — San Francisco Chronicle
22. "The Leisure Class" (HBO, TV Movie)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: 2.8/10
What critics said: "There’s little reason to waste 85 minutes watching Jason Mann’s 'The Leisure Class,' a tonally troubled and reprehensibly dull movie." — The Washington Post
23. "Tucker" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "A dopey comedy deserves a dopey assessment: Tucker sucks. Please make it go away." — Detroit Free Press
24. "The Trouble With Normal" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "ABC has been promoting the heck out of 'The Trouble With Normal,' but the shockingly unfunny ensemble and rotten scripts will undo all that publicity in minutes. On a positive note, this will almost certainly end the TV career of Jon Cryer." — Kansas City Star
25. "Happy Hour" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "Sheer, excruciating pain.... 'Happy Hour' stands a good chance of being named Worst New Show, or at least feeblest new sitcom." — The Washington Post
26. "Hawaii" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 25/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "The new cop series 'Hawaii' isn't your father's 'Hawaii Five-O.' It's probably not yours, either, or your child's, or anyone's. It's awful." — New York Daily News
27. "Dr. Ken" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 26/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: "A family comedy has to have heart and humor, and 'Dr. Ken' has neither." — Los Angeles Times
28. "How to Get the Guy" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 26/100
User score: 7.2/10
What critics said: "A ridiculous, cloying, condescending, wrong-headed reality show." — New York Post
29. "Get This Party Started" (UPN, Season 1)
Critic score: 26/100
User score: 3.6/10
What critics said: "UPN's new series has a shot — in the sweepstakes for the worst reality show of all time." — PopMatters
30. "Truth Be Told" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 26/100
User score: 4.1/10
What critics said: "Not a single scene feels authentic, even if we excuse the overexplanations we often see in comedy pilots. This show is not provocative. It is not a conversation-starter, it is not thoughtful, it is not sharp, it is not enlightening." — Vulture
31. "Liz & Dick" (Lifetime, TV Movie)
Critic score: 26/100
User score: 3.8/10
What critics said: "A wildly graceless biopic that careens through the decades-long relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton with more petulance than passion." — Los Angeles Times
32. "Desire" (My Network TV, Season 1)
Critic score: 27/100
User score: 7.5/10
What critics said: "In terms of intelligence, wit and quality, 'Desire' is a serious cut below most prime time drama series." — Detroit Free Press
33. "In Case of Emergency" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 27/100
User score: 6.9/10
What critics said: "Somewhere trapped inside this shrill, irritating comedy is a better show that emerges only in fleeting glimpses." — Variety
34. "Does Someone Have To Go?" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 27/100
User score: 3.3/10
What critics said: "'Lord of the Flies'-meets-a-telephone book, and just about as entertaining." — Newsday
35. "Dirty Dancing" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 27/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "Play[s] like an extended shampoo commercial and lacking the edge and joyful vigor of the movie on which it is based." — Los Angeles Times
36. "$#*! My Dad Says" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 4.4/10
What critics said: "'$#*! My Dad Says' is a dismal show, harboring the worst qualities of every lame, four-camera, laugh-tracked sitcom on television." — Slant Magazine
37. "Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 3.8/10
What critics said: "Moving on from the prevalent misogyny of the original 'Criminal Minds,' CBS' new spinoff 'Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders' is a pure distillation of xenophobia." — The Hollywood Reporter
38. "Rules of Engagement" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 7.5/10
What critics said: "The series quickly begins to resemble one of those fake sitcoms you’d see in a snide movie that likes to take easy potshots at low culture." — L.A. Weekly
39. "Murphy's Law" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "A series so monumentally meaningless, so pathetically puerile, so irredeemably ridiculous that, within my limited professional context, it prompts the Biggest Question of them all: Why is there television?" — Newsday
40. "Love Inc." (UPN, Season 1)
41. "The War at Home" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 3.9/10
What critics said: "If 'The War at Home' spent more time on good jokes instead of recycling every gimmick ever seen on TV, it might merely be mediocre, but it's worse." — San Francisco Chronicle
42. "Painkiller Jane" (Syfy, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 6.1/10
What critics said: "The show is long on concept and short on execution which would actually be OK if the writing and acting were not so simply terrible." — Los Angeles Times
43. "Sex Box" (WE, Season 1)
Critic score: 28/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: "Watching it is kind of like bad sex—the clock watching, the profound embarrassment, the desire to check your email." — The New York Times
44. "The Return of Jezebel James" (Fox, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 5.2/10
What critics said: "Miscast and only intermittently funny, 'Jezebel James' misfires on all cylinders." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
45. "Ghost Whisperer" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 8.3/10
What critics said: "At times during 'Ghost Whisperer,' the sentiment is so thick you might want to go away from the light — the light from the TV set, that is." — Boston Globe
46. "Rob" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 3.8/10
What critics said: "There's hardly a moment or performance in 'Rob' that doesn't reek of the leftover and the second-rate." — USA Today
47. "Big Brother" (CBS, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 5.2/10
What critics said: "Five days a week of people in a cramped house full of Ikea furniture is like a bad college flashback." — Variety
48. "American Inventor" (ABC, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 5.1/10
What critics said: "A bloated disappointment that spends more time on the judges than the inventors and their inventions." — Houston Chronicle
49. "Hidden Hills" (NBC, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: Unavailable
What critics said: "This series reflects the way wealthy, neurotic, overly busy and sex-obsessed TV executives and producers think America lives, in other words, the way they live. They're wrong." — The Detroit News
50. "South Beach" (UPN, Season 1)
Critic score: 29/100
User score: 8.6/10
What critics said: "A preposterous and pretentious drama series." — The Washington Post
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