With the disastrous reception of All’s Fair dominating the cultural conversation, there’s no better time to look back on some of the other TV shows that were considered the worst ever made upon their release, from Inhumans to Velma and The Idol. It takes a lot of work to make a TV show, and it takes a lot more work to make it good.
Perhaps this maxim, along with the millions of dollars in their respective net worths, will be some comfort to Ryan Murphy and Kim Kardashian in the midst of the critical drubbing received by their new show All’s Fair. A legal drama co-starring Niecy Nash-Betts and Naomi Watts, All’s Fair is notable mostly for its staggeringly poor critical reception.
From USA Today dubbing All’s Fair “The worst TV show of the year” to The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan bequeathing the series a vanishingly rare 0-star review, to All Fair’s 0% Rotten Tomatoes score on the day of its release, the drama is a truly historic flop. However, it’s far from the first show to be called the worst ever.
Canceled after only two episodes, Work It was a satirical sitcom set in St. Louis. The show focused on two male characters, Lee and Angel, who decide to dress as women to get jobs due to the terrible economy of the early 2010s. If that sounds like a misguided and potentially transphobic nightmare of a premise, that’s because it was.
Not only was Work It criticized by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, GLAAD, and Human Rights Campaign, but the ABC sitcom also managed to earn the ire of another group entirely thanks to one gag from its pilot. Puerto Rican viewers didn’t take kindly to a character’s claim that he would be “Great at selling drugs” thanks to his heritage.
A more recent flop, 2023’s The Idol was heavily promoted pre-release by HBO thanks to its buzzy creator and stars. Euphoria creator Sam Levinson directed R&B legend Abel Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp in this murky, Gothic tale of a cultish nightclub owner who sets his predatory sights on an innocent young pop star.
This premise seemingly sets the stage for a dark, potentially daring romantic thriller, but that’s not what viewers got from The Idol. Instead, The Hollywood Reporter’s dismissive write-up nailed the show’s issues by noting that “in trying so hard to be transgressive, the show ultimately becomes regressive.”
Far from shocking, The Idol fell flat, feeling comically out of touch and taking itself and its vampiric villain far too seriously for its own good. What might have been an edgy, self-aware show business satire instead ended up becoming a profound career low for all involved, and one of the first truly mortifying TV flops of the 2020s.
To be fair to Capitol Critters, plenty of other TV shows tried to rip off The Simpsons when the animated sitcom proved an unexpectedly massive global phenomenon in the early 1990s. The difference is that all the show’s other competitors at least had some semblance of a justification for their existence, however threadbare.
Family Dog was a blatant rip-off of The Simpsons, but it was developed by Brad Bird and Tim Burton with Steven Spielberg producing the series, and it was based on an acclaimed episode of Amazing Stories. Fish Police was, inexplicably, a show about fish police, but the series was at least based on a beloved cult comic.