There are subjectives, and then there are these. While you may believe a work fits here, and you might be right, people tend to have rather vocal, differing opinions about this subject. Please keep these off of the work's page.
Live-Action TV
"In Beverly Hills ... they don't throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows."
Sometimes, you just wonder what television executives were thinking when they greenlight shows like these and kick others out the door before giving them a shot at stardom. These particular programs give new meaning to the term "idiot box".
Important Note: Merely being offensive in its subject matter isn't enough to justify a work as Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there's a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to fail to appeal even to that niche to qualify as this. If it has a fandom of any sort, it doesn't belong on this list.
Second Important Note: It is not a Horrible TV series just because anyone from That Guy with the Glasses or any other Caustic Critic reviewed it. There needs to be independent evidence, such as actual critics (emphasis on plural) for example, to list it. (Though once it is listed, they can provide their detailed review(s).)
Examples (more-or-less in alphabetical order by TV show name):
Battlestar Galactica 1980. This sequel/spinoff of the original series eliminated half the cast (including Apollo, Cassiopeia, and Baltar) without explanation, then attempted to pander to audiences with insipid plots involving a group of space children named "The Super Scouts". Good actors made complete fools of themselves — especially Lorne Greene, who was stuck talking to a child prodigy named Dr. Zee, for most of the run. It featured what could be one of the worst episodes of a science-fiction series ever made, "Spaceball," in which the Super Scouts have to win a baseball game. The creators were forced to write stories that could be marketed to young children and shoehorn environmental messages into each one, mainly since the show was broadcast at 7:30 PM — a dead zone that killed any chance for success even if it had been worth watching. Here's TV Trash'sreview of the disaster.
The writers themselves hated it. Every morning they would chant "come on thirteen" in reference to the highest rating the show could get and still be canned. Glen Larson had to deal with ABC's Standards and Practices, including their demands for more children, which in turn caused a influx of stage moms. The entire sordid story must be read to be believed. But the show's biggest sin? It killed off the Galactica franchise for over 20 years until a rebootmade it popular again.
Life With Lucy. No, not I Love Lucy — Life With Lucy. This 1986 Lucille Ball comedy series was supposed to be a smash success, but instead became one of the biggest critical and commercial flops of the 1980s. Why? ABC gave complete creative control to Ball, who was 75 years old at the time of production — a risky move because A) advertisers prefer viewers under 49, and B) in a deep risk, the show led off the night. The plot, with Ball's character helping out at a California hardware store, was painfully slow and not funny. The show finished almost dead-last in the season's rankings, and Ball was reportedly so devastated by its failure that she gave up production on any more television projects. Pity.
As pointed out by the book What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, part of the reason for the series' failure is that it tried to recreate the physical stunts of I Love Lucy when Ball was in her seventies. Watching her try to do those stunts didn't so much inspire laughter as it did fear for her safety. Supposedly, the idea of incorporating slapstick was made by an executive that firmly believed that fans would want some of the classic gags I Love Lucy was known for.
McGurk: A Dogs Life. A 1979 ABC 1/2 hour "comedy" canceled with only the pilot aired. It starred Barney Martin (aka Morty Seinfeld) as a fat old dog named Mcgurk. All the cast wore the finest kindergarten-play quality dog suits while a laugh track brayed over painful quips about such 70s classics as health food, Glen Campbell, joggers, and steel belted radials. In an attempt to widen the demographics, the dogs next door were made "sexy" in a deeply disturbing and anatomically improbable way. Representative dialog: "Your lips told me no no, but there was yes yes in your tail." The human characters were not seen and spoke in Peanuts style gibberish. The climax featured a twist that would make M Night Shyamalan cry and also dancing dogs.
The Tammy Grimes Show, aired on ABC in 1966, starred Grimes as an heiress with plots focusing on how much she loved to spend money. Ten episodes were produced, but only four aired before it was canned and replaced by a nighttime version of The Dating Game. Keep in mind that this was when networks were far slower to bring down the axe — My Mother The Car lasted a full season, but Tammy Grimes lasted just four shows.
Turn-On was a Totally RadicalSketch "Comedy" program on ABC in 1969. Inspired and produced by some of the same people who made the actual hit show Rowan And Martins Laugh In, it took everything in that show and turned it Up to Eleven. It was canned before the premiere had finished its half-hour run, though most of ABC at least let it finish running.note :And at least four ABC affiliates didn't even wait that long. Cleveland's WEWS and Denver's KBTV (now NBC station KUSA) cut away from the network for a documentary on gun safety, while KATU in Portland, Oregon and WHNC (now WTNH) in Hartford-New Haven, Connecticut didn't air the show at all. It tried to be psychedelic and Totally Radical (something television as a medium has never been good at) and surreal (which it perhaps succeeded at too well), along with being more openly sexual than shows normally got back then (which was the reason why TV executives and censors hated the show and wanted it to die). Here's a sampler.
Work It, ABC's 2012 cross-dressing comedy set In a World where only women are getting jobs, was critically savaged from the word "go". The writing was full of bottom-of-the-barrel humor and played so much to stereotype it wasn't even funny. The premise was built on misogyny, and the writing is shamelessly racist. Offensive to women, minorities, and everybody else with a working brain, it was canned within two episodes (six episodes were ordered overall). Its only redeeming quality is that it killed off ABC's attempts to make "mancession" comedy a genre. It was so bad, it broke IGN's rating scale, "earning" a zero out of ten.
Where Do I Sit? In 1971, comedian Peter Cook was riding high with his comedy show Not Only But Also when he was offered his own vehicle with full creative control. Foolishly, he decided to do a combination chat show, sketch comedy, and music show. The premiere had Peter interviewing S. J. Perelman, who just sat in his seat yawning while Peter couldn't think of anything to ask. An interview with Kirk Douglas featured an inebriated Peter asking Kirk "Who are you?" followed by a long, awful silence. The show also featured the unedifying sight of Peter ripping into an audience member who had complained about a sketch he had performed and phoning up a viewer at home who had pondered whether Peter was on drugs (the call took over five minutes as the person was in the bath). Peter also insisted on performing a song in each show, and he was a notoriously bad singer. The show managed to last three episodes, after which it was canned and the tapes wiped.
Incredible Crew. The show is chock full of badly written and produced rap videos, bad jokes, and No Budget special effects. From the premiere on New Years' Eve, barely anyone could sit through it. However, despite the drop of ratings almost immediately, CN still decided to pick it up and promote the hell out of it. Currently holds a 2.4 out of 10 user rating on tv.com.
Comedy Network
House Party. Not to be confused with the 1990 film of the same name starring Kid 'n' Play, this was a 2008 Canadian comedy series that was mercifully short lived and ran only for 6 episodes. The premise consisted of an already run-into-the-ground premise (kid's parents go away for the weekend so he holds a house party and the shit hits the fan), which was run into the ground even further. The acting was painful and elementary-level at best, the lighting was extremely poor (at times the bottom half of the frame would be much higher lit than the top), boring camera work, and jokes that were so painfully unfunny that at times the show was emotionally draining to watch. To give you a taste, one excruciatingly unfunny joke that happened in all 6 episodes was a girl going around asking everyone at the party if they wanted to try her potato chip dip. Another joke had jocks convincing the protagonist that his cat could talk. The show has been re-aired very few times since, and those re-airings were limited to dead of night airings. Thank God the series never really took off.
The Trouble With Tracy is thought to have been made just to fulfill a then financially unsteady CTV's quota for Canada-produced content. There's certainly no other justification for this 130-episode 1970's sitcom, which went on for six months due to a desperate attempt by CTV to recoup their investments. Due to a severe lack of time and money, they could not shoot on-location, build convincing sets, or even retake scenes. The scripts were, for the most part, recycled from the 1930-45 radio series Easy Aces, with a few topical references (such as Tracy's deadbeat hippie brother) shoehorned in.
In an attempt to bring the ratings gold of MTV's The Osbournes to network TV, FOX created Osbournes: Reloaded, a Variety Show starring the first family of metal. The premiere consisted of a guy being tricked into kissing an elderly woman blindfolded, a "randomly-selected" audience member given the prize of marriage to his long-time girlfriend (they were married on-air), painfully long and unfunny sketches with little kids dressed as Ozzy & Sharon (the joke is that they swear) and Ozzy & Kelly working in fast food. The show was canned after one episode, although multiple affiliates either refused to air it or threw it on in the dead of night.
The ½ Hour News Hour, a satirical news show created and produced by Joel Surnow for Fox News Channel in mid-2007. The show was intended as the conservative answer to The Daily Show; unfortunately, though, while Daily was relatively even-handed in its mockery of politicians, network news, and the general public, ½ Hour dedicated itself entirely to taking weak, half-hearted potshots at popular targets for conservatives, including Barack Obama, the ACLU, and the Democratic Party. When their jokes weren't eye-rollingly obvious, they were relentlessly mean-spirited and bitter. The show was universally panned by the critics and canned after 17 episodes.
Galaxy
Heil Honey, I'm Home!: Six episodes were filmed, but only one aired, of this sitcom (yes, sitcom) about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun living next door to a Jewish family. They apparently tried to kill the Jewish family every week, but the Jewish family remained blissfully unaware of Hitler's treachery. Ironically, this was conceived as a parody of terrible sitcoms — the premiere tries to spoof the old "my boss is coming to dinner" plot with Neville Chamberlain — but unfortunately it ended up becoming the thing it tried to parody. Humor is almost nonexistent, the main concept's played straight, Hitler's no different than any other sitcom husband, and his attempt at a catchphrase is the incredibly-creative "Honey, I've been a baaaaaad Hitler!" One of the strangest things ever seen on TV, it appealed to nobody and hasn't been aired in its entirety since (although a clip is here, The Cinema Snob's review of the pilot is here, TV Trash ripped it right here and the whole thing's available on Blip.tv), though parts turn up in clip shows of the worst TV moments ever.
Britain is typically known for creating good shows ruined by Americans, but it's also been known to happen the other way around. For instance, Days Like These, an inexcusable remake of That '70s Show. Every episode had the exact same plot and situations as the episode of its US counterpart before it, but rewritten so that it fits the British setting and characters, and they just couldn't nail it. The jokes very seldom made sense and at times were downright awkward, the pacing was hideous, the staging and blocking were depressing to watch, and the whole thing just ended up being one giant trainwreck. The show has a total of 13 episodes, but only 10 were ever aired in the initial run (all 13 were eventually shown), and a good lesson was learned with regards to the difference between American and British senses of humor, ending the idea of British remakes of American works as a whole. (The Golden Girls, Married... with Children, Mad About You, and Good Times, among others, were also translated. None of them worked.)
Emeril. No, not the cooking show — the sitcom. Imagine watching beloved chef Emeril Lagasse trying and failing miserably at acting. Also imagine a bunch of lame jokes being repeated over and over again every episode. The series barely lasted eight episodes and the chef's career went steadily downhill afterward. It's very often seen on "Worst Of All Time" lists. Sadly, it was one of the last roles for co-star Robert Urich.
There had been bad sitcoms before, but My Mother The Car was one of the first to attain true infamy for its terribleness. Its premise is that the protagonist's recently-deceased mother has been reincarnated as a (fictional) 1928 Porter; aside from that not being how reincarnation is supposed to work, it doesn't translate well to monochrome live-action TV because you can barely see when the mother's speaking — they use a faint flickering light in her (anachronistic) car radio. The full ontological possibilities are never explored, perhaps because the writers were unable to think of them. None of the characters are sympathetic. Worst of all, none of the jokes are funny! You can now (legally!) witness the horror on YouTube. You can also watch TV Trash'sreview of it. Fun fact: the lead actor, Jerry Van Dyke, turned down the role of Gilligan for this dreck.
Pink Lady And Jeff, perhaps the worst TV Variety Show ever produced, was the brainchild of NBC exec Fred Silverman, and was helmed by legendary TV producers Sid & Marty Krofft (who had also given us The Brady Bunch Hour, in addition to allthosetrippykids'shows). The show was intended to be a star vehicle for the Japanese singing duo Pink Lady, consisting of singers Mitsuyo "Mie" Nemoto and Keiko "Kei" Masuda who were paired with comedian Jeff Altman. The only problem? Neither member of Pink Lady could speak a word of English, and they had to learn all their lines phonetically. This led to one of the biggest trainwrecks in the history of television, and is often named as the exact moment when the Variety Showstopped being relevant in American television. Despite the singing talent of the ladies, who sang a few tunes in their native tongue (without subtitles), the show only lasted six episodes — the last of which didn't even air. Pink Lady was continuing its tour during filming, so between that and the language barrier we saw much more of Jeff...whose material wasn't good enough to hold things together. This show was so bad that The Agony Booth did a detailed run-down of the entire series with tons of screencaps from the official DVD — including the unaired sixth episode, which manages to make the first five look tame and actually serves as a fitting closer.
Supertrain. Fred Silverman, maker of the aforementioned Pink Lady, had come over to the struggling network from ABC, where The Love Boat was a ratings hit. He decided his new homebase needed a similar show — a traveling location that combined the best of City of Adventure and Walking the Earth, a large staff to slot the regulars into, and plenty of visitors/passengers who could be played by big-name guests. This show had all of that. It had everything that The Love Boat had except A) the boat itself and B) viewers. No, the location of this show was a giant, multi-story, nuclear-powered... train. Because, you know, the female 18-35 demographic is all aboutgiant nuclear trains.
According to legend, Silverman tried to show off the model of Supertrain (which purportedly cost over $1,000,000 to make) to fellow NBC executives. When it started to move, the train inexplicably jumped the tracks and smashed to bits on the studio floor, causing another equally-expensive model to be built because they didn't get the hint. The show's a rich source of Snark Bait for train fans. Supposedly, the train was so wide it required a 3,000-mile wide-gauge rail line. The train had shopping centers and discos onboard, and yes, you read the above right — it was nuclear-powered. In 1979, the year of Three-Mile Island. Between this show, Pink Lady, America's boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, and Season 6 of Saturday Night Live (which, in Seasons 4 and 5, never missed an opportunity to poke fun at Silverman's disasters), NBC nearlywent bankrupt.
Ben Elton Live From Planet Earth, a live Australian stand-up / sketch-comedy variety show starring comedian Ben Elton. It was intended as something of a comeback for Elton, who'd been absent from the comedy scene for a while and widely considered a Fallen Creator. It was also intended as a flagship for Nine, the network which aired it. Unfortunately, the material was dated, ineptly presented, and largely unfunny; it impressed almost no one. During the premiere, viewing figures dropped from 805,000 at the start (it was scheduled to start after Top Gear in primetime) to 233,000 by the end, with about 200,000 people dropping out every 15 minutes...and if the reaction on Twitter and other social networking sites was anything to go by, most of those who hung around watched solely to rip it to shreds. Critics were by and large no more generous; typical reviews took the lines "an early contender for worst show of the year" or "a screaming, embarrassing failure". It lasted three weeks, shedding even more viewers, before being cancelled.
Quite possibly the worst section of the whole thing was Girl Flat, a sitcom in which Lady Gaga, Beyoncé Knowles, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse share a flat. It comes off like every line was ripped from the worst YouTube comments - apparently, the writers thought that a famous woman saying vagina was the funniest thing ever.
RCTV
De Oro Puro ("Of Pure Gold"), a Venezuelan Soap Opera which, despite its high production values, was unspeakably awful. The plot seemed to be a Love Triangle between a girl with Psychic Powers and Easy Amnesia, a man with a Mysterious Past, and the Wandering Jew, who's female and apparently mother of the heroine (Jesus damned her from the cross and all). There was also a Mad Scientist with a lab with jar people growing up, and numerous supernatural elements. At least, that's about as much sense as could be made. RCTV, the network that made it, placed it in the timeslot previously occupied by the long-lasting, successful, social-themed soap Por Estas Calles, causing a cultural shock that obviously didn't help it at all. When the ratings sank, they tried to attract people by airing segments in which the whole cast and a respected character actress who wasn't even in the production recapped and explained the convoluted plot and backstory; this backfired when people realized that, if the creators had to explain the story, the viewers won't get much from watching it. When it was obvious that the show couldn't be saved, they edited the final chapters to reduce them so they could finish the emission sooner, hacking off the resolution of its plot points and alienating the few souls who did invest their time watching it. The parody by Radio Rochelanote RCTV's main Sketch Comedy show, a rough Venezuelan equivalent of Saturday Night Live was arguably better.
This show's failure ruined the reputation of its writer Julio César Mármol (an usually competent play and scriptwriter, who had written huge successes like Estefanía, La Dueña, and El Desprecio), contributed to the ratings downfall of RCTV during a good chunk of The Nineties, and killed the then-budding practice of fully filming a soap before broadcasting (usually, Latin soaps first film a 20-episode buffer and then film day-to-day so they can adjust the plot according to ratings and character reception). This soap had been completed before the premiere, meaning that nobody could step in and set the show right once it was clear how bad it was. All of the above measures were meant to try to recoup any losses, and because RCTV produced it they were obligated to broadcast the full run. If you see the site of [[www.rctvintl.com/eng/results.php?c=telenovelas RCTV International]], you'll notice that the description of this soap is notably and deliberately more obtuse and poetic than the rest of the shows.
The Secret Diary Of Desmond Pfeiffer (the "P" isn't silent): Short-lived (and extremely low-rated) UPN sitcom, possibly the network's worst such series aimed towards African-Americans, that aired only four episodes out of the nine produced overall in October 1998, which starred Chi McBride as the titular character, a Black English nobleman who is kidnapped and sent to America on a slave ship, then becomes Abraham Lincoln's valet in the form of a Servile Snarker that is more competent than any other inhabitants in the White House throughout the Civil War, who are all portrayed as being very stupid. Notorious for being the subject of protests by African American groups against the series' arguably lighthearted portrayal of slavery. Because of this controversy, the original pilot episode, where Desmond Pfeiffer becomes Lincoln's butler and attempts to return to England, was never broadcast. It was so poorly received, it was even advertised with the tagline "Critics hate it." The show would have been forgotten if not for various references on Clerks The Animated Series. Brad Jones did a review of this series for his DVD-R Hell series.
Set For Life, a mercifully short-lived ABC game show created by the Deal Or No Deal people and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. The contestant was on a Luck-Based Mission that requires literally nothing but pulling out "light sticks" (giant Lite-Brite pegs) and going up the money ladder. White ones advanced you, red ones knocked you down; pulling all four reds ended the game. But there was a twist which easily led to a Shocking Swerve — offscreen, the player had a "guardian angel" who could stop the game at any time, but their decision wasn't revealed until the player finished their game (either by pulling out all the white pegs, getting all the red ones, or simply quitting themselves), meaning entire chunks of the game could be for naught. Even worse, while the show used a qualifying game that determined how much each player would be playing for (Kimmel stated it involved twelve numbers and an envelope), it was never shown!
The British version handled that part differently and at least showed it on-air — the couple picked a dollar amount, then played a variation of the stick-pulling game with three reds. White sticks added to the pot, red sticks subtracted; the couple could stop at any time, but only after they picked a white one. What you gain in truthfulness, you lose in tediousness.
Black Family Channel
Thousand-Dollar Bee, a children's game show filmed in Atlanta for the now-defunct and little-seen Black Family Channel. It was a televised spelling bee/vocabulary game with a very odd Bill Cosby-type host named Sinatra who wore a Geeky bow tie. The contestants were dreadfully bad at spelling and didn't have any drive to be better, as the prize for the entire season was a $1,000 savings bond for college, enough in these days to buy maybe books for a year. It also had the lowest production values ever seen on cable TV in the 21st Century — a creepy CGI bee straight out of the Video Brinquedo handbook, Powerpoint-grade captions done in Comic Sans, a "theme song" consisting of the same two bars of music and chipmunk vocals, a Kid Sidekick in a bee costume who provided overly precocious commentary about the contestants and their progress, and an entire round that involved spelling out words with refrigerator magnets, though that last one could be forgiven as a homage to the Scrambleboard of Soul Train. Here's some gameplay, if you dare.
Bravo
Top Design, during its first season. Bravo thought people who loved Top Chef and Project Runway would love to see more takes on that formula, and so they made a show like those two shows, but with interior designers. They also decided to combine the host and mentor roles into host Todd Oldham. Now, this can be done right — HGTV had a competitive reality show for interior designers that worked. But Top Design didn't get it right. The challenges were not engaging enough to viewers; the elimination catchphrase "See you later, Decorator" was dull; and Todd Oldham had negative charisma. The show was a flop in the ratings. Instead of canceling it right then, Bravo gave it a second chance, giving production of the Season 2 to the studio behind Top Chef and Project Runway and ordering a major retool of the show to get it closer to the formula of Chef and the Bravo seasons of Runway.
India Hicks became the new host; Oldham was demoted to mentor, but unfortunately was still there. The elimination catchphrase was changed, the challenges became more elaborate, and the Season 2 finale was a two-parter. Despite the changes, the retool failed to bring in new viewers. Nowadays, when Top Design is mentioned in articles or forums related to Bravo shows, the reaction is always negative. Despite this, three years later, Nine Network launched an Australian version.
You're in the Picture is almost a byword for bad ideas executed badly — or would be if it was better known. It was a 1960s game show hosted by Jackie Gleason, where the four-celebrity panel stuck their heads through pictorial cut-outs and tried to guess what picture they were in. Within five minutes of the premiere, it was clear that the game was nigh-impossible and far from interesting; even the prize was lame — 100 CARE packages donated in that celeb's name (if nobody guessed, they were donated in Gleason's name). The following week's "show" consisted entirely of Gleason shotgunning coffee (which an audience member had poured some booze into) and apologizing to everyone who watched the premiere. Incidentally, the half-hour apology (the Poorly Disguised Pilot to a Gleason talk show) may be the funniest moment of his long and illustrious career.
Citytv
Canada's Got Talent is often considered by many to be the worst out of the "________'s Got Talent" shows, for many different reasons. The show was forced to make plenty of inexplicable changes from the British and US versions due to budget constraints, and it shows- actual episodes were an hour long each with the results shows being 30 minutes each, resulting in the show being much less accommodating. The show also changed the idea of the original where semifinalists were judged in front of a live audience after the auditions to contestants being judged by their regional auditions. The show also ended up with 36 semifinalists (in lieu of the other shows' 72 semifinalists), and the judges (Measha Brueggergosman, Martin Short, and Stephan Moccio) were routinely condemned by critics and audiences for being both more annoying than the bad contestants and being way too kind. Halfway through the season, the series got canceled for considerably low ratings, and high production costs that seemed like a near impossible task for City TV, as the network lost a considerable amount of money with each episode, and didn't create any new reality shows after. In addition, neither the winning contestants nor the judges had been seen in much after the show finished, for obvious reasons.
Mystery Diners, a "reality show" that comes off as unbelievable for several reasons. The owners seem to only do the show for free publicity (and nothing is ever found wrong with their own management), some situations (such as a beer bong in a formal restaurant or a bartender running his "own" bar off-hours) would be definitely brought up long before through a comment card, Yelp review or a phone call when the owner was actually in, and in one situation, a new beer wholesaler which was a plant for the mystery diners did not identify their company by name, a major no-no in any business. Also, even though outright retail theft is shown multiple times, none of the owners have called for the police when the confrontation takes place (a standard norm in those situations), leaving the 'culprits' to pretty much get away with it beyond their firings. Finally, unbelievable things (overly hostile customer plants, beautiful-looking new women hires wearing bulky glasses-cams, and even an accusation that the Mystery Diners leader's "daughter" was hired for the part), along with overly rehearsed 'offensive' behavior suggesting a lack of true reality.
Restaurant Stakeout has pretty much the same concept as the above, and many of the same flaws. The premise is like Kitchen NightmaresLite. Hidden cameras placed around a restaurant are supposed to catch chefs and waiters acting unprofessionally so the Donald Trump like host can reveal himself and come down on them at the end of the episode. A great idea, but there's one problem: this could be filed as a scripted show. Actors are hired, employees are told how to act, and everyone is aware they are on camera. One restaurant owner admitted that nothing that happened was real during the second episode. Add in a blustering, uncharismatic host, and you have an absolute joke of a program.
In 2002, FOX aired a quiz show called The Chamber, which was a textbook example of how not to do a quiz show. It was rushed to air to compete with ABC's The Chair, a passable game hosted by John McEnroe that quizzed contestants while subjecting them to events intended to raise their heart rate — which itself aired only a half-season. The Chamber taped only six episodes and aired only three. Contestants were subjected to extreme heat, extreme cold, high winds, simulated earthquakes, etc.note If the producers had done their homework, they'd know that the winds at level 4 and above were enough to cause extreme frostbite in the cold chamber. And only the producers at FOX know what went on in the Water, Insect, and Electric chambers that were only used in unreleased episodes., and we didn't even get Scenery Porn from it. It is believed that one contestant sued the network over health issues brought on by the show's stimuli. You can see a full aired episode here.
The show was also plagued by frequent audio equipment failures. The headsets worn by the contestants were prone to falling off, and in one episode the headset just plain stopped working, resulting in the host having to shout the questions into the chamber.
Matt Vasgersian, formerly of Sports Geniuses, was originally slated to host, but was disgusted by the show's premise and left before it even premiered.
MA Dtv made fun of this show in "The Probe", a sketch where a woman (played by Mo Collins) is strapped to an operating table as a giant drill whirls towards her spread-open legs and she screams for someone to let her out.
Married By America, on FOX in 2003. In the first half of this miniseries, a series of men and women were matched up with potential spouses; their families and viewers' call-in votes ultimately arranged their engagements sight-unseen. The second half of the series followed the 10 couples thus created to a retreat where they spent the next few weeks "preparing for the wedding" and competing to avoid getting "voted out". In the finale, it was down to two couples and two weddings — and if either couple agreed to say "I Do" at the altar they won a ridiculous sum of money. Neither couple agreed to go through with it, making the whole series a wash.
In one episode, FOX sent a bunch of strippers into the resort for the grooms' "bachelor party" to try to see if any of the guys would break — if they did, they were voted out. The FCC fined FOX over this episode, although FOX managed to get the fine substantially reduced after it was revealed that most of the complaints were part of an Astro Turf campaign.
Most of those who heard about it found it twisted, feeling that it degraded both the participants and the very concept of marriage. The Raleigh-Durham affiliate (WRAZ) found the show so distasteful, they ran reruns of The Andy Griffith Show instead. However, most people just didn't hear about it, so it got bad ratings.
Another one from FOX, 2003's Mr. Personality, a five-episode series hosted by Monica Lewinsky (the former White House intern at the center of the Bill Clinton sex scandal). It was like The Bachelorette — a woman picks a husband out of a field of suitors. But all the men wore creepy-as-hell masks so she could pick the right guy without considering looks. Good concept, horrible execution — the vast majority of the guys were movie-star handsome, with the one or two "ugly" ones Hollywood Homely at best.
The Swan. Unlike most makeover shows, this one took plain-looking women with bad health, self-esteem problems, etc. and put them through months of therapy, strenuous training, and painful, extensive surgery in order to transform them into plastic facsimiles of the "Hollywood Ideal" — all for a beauty pageant at the end. A few women got sent home early because of accidents or mishaps under the knife, leaving them worse off than they were before. And during the pageant finale, the girls came down the catwalk to the tune of "If Everybody Looked The Same", or at least a version that never got to the next line — "We'd get tired of looking at each other." Entertainment Weekly called it the worst reality show ever made, and it's been described as nothing more than a thinly-veiled advert for the plastic surgery industry.
In one episode, a contestant was reluctant to have her nose operated on, as it was something of a family trait she shared with her daughters and was proud of. The show made no attempt to hide the disdain everyone had for this woman who didn't want to turn into a life-size Barbie clone.
Without A Trace did a Played for Drama version of this, with the missing person being a contestant on a Swan-like show and later realizing she shouldn't have changed.
The two-hour FOX reality special Who Wants To Marry A Multi-Millionaire?, aired in February 2000, is one of the low points in that network's long run of horrible ideas. The premise? 50 gold-diggers competed to marry a "multi-millionaire" named Rick Rockwell (later discovered to have been worth only $2 million, with less than $1 million in liquid assets — pretty well-off, but far from the elite uber-rich dude he had been promoted as). The woman he chose would be married to him on the spot and win $100,000 and various prizes; said winner, Darva Conger, wound up getting a divorce less than two months after the show aired... but not before capitalizing on her 15 Minutes of Fame by almost immediately posing for Playboy. It was revealed not long after the special that one of Rockwell's ex-girlfriends had filed a restraining order against him for Domestic Abuse. What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History has this squarely at #9.
Yet anotherone from FOX — the insipid reality show Who's Your Daddy? A person who had been adopted as an infant is forced to pick out his/her biological father from a group of 25 men. Picking the right man won $100,000, but otherwise the "impostor" got the money. Yes, you read that correctly — somebody at FOX thought it would be a bright idea to take the paternity tests from Maury and build an entire reality show around them. After being hit with poor ratings, massive public backlash, and the Raleigh-Durham affiliate (WRAZ, the same station that refused to air Married by America) refusing to broadcast the show, FOX canned it after one episode... then aired the other five episodes they had filmed on their FOX Reality cable channel.
Faux Pause, a short-lived creation of GSN from 1998. The concept was basically a game show version of Mystery Science Theater 3000 — find an old game show and riff on it. However, it failed on so many levels: the hosts (obscure comedians Mary Gallagher and Sean Donnellan) were extremely unfunny and often mean in their riffs (e.g. calling everyone in Oregon a hick, implying that New Jersey girls are all ugly, or making a joke about excessive chain-smoking when the host of the show they were riffing on died of lung cancer); their shows of choice were often Cult Classics (e.g. Go, Hot Potato) or at least unremarkable shows not bad enough to warrant the MST treatment; and the interstitial skits were both unfunny and poorly-acted. Read a review of the series here, and a rundown of the Hot Potato episode here. Perhaps the only good thing about the show was that its producer Frank Nicotero went on to host Street Smarts (itself a cult classic in the game show field). Sean Donnellan, meanwhile, made a decent career as a video game voice actor.
Oxygen
Tease, a laughable show on Oxygen that tried to replicate the formula of Iron ChefWITH HAIRSTYLISTS! The show tried to aim for the Blaxploitation vibe of hairstylist-themed movies such as Barber Shop and Hair Show; they had "black" celebrity Lisa Rinna as host, and many of the contestants had a "ghetto-fabulous" schtick going for them. But the show was terrible and ran only six episodes in 2007, done in by Oxygen being bought by NBC shortly after its premiere and NBC not wanting it to cannibalize their much better show in Bravo's Shear Genius.
One of the shows PAX aired on its first day (August 31, 1998) was a game show called The Reel-To-Reel Picture Show. It was a painfully-dull movie trivia Q&A created to sell an equally-dull movie trivia Q&A board game with No Budget. While Peter Marshall was a master on The Hollywood Squares and other games, he was a deer in the headlights here — often tripping over questions, forgetting the rules, and making unintentional Squares references. (And it's not as if he had old age or health to blame; he seemed perfectly fine as Guest Host on a Squares revival in 2003 despite pushing 80 at the time.) The celebrity guests looked like they would've rather been somewhere else, and some of them were clueless. The production company had financial difficulties and had to pull the plug after only 25 episodes, which is truly bad for a traditional game show and one-eighth of what PAX had ordered. Worst of all, nobody ever got paid! The show ran from August 31 to October 2, after which repeats aired for a brief period. Interestingly, this was the second time Marshall hosted a game show where both he and the contestants never got paid. The first was a game show version of Yahtzee in 1988, which was a confusing Match Game knockoff With Dice! that still managed not to be completely terrible — for one, it taped at Trump's Castle in Atlantic City, and it was executive produced by Ralph Andrews (of Lingo fame).
Tien
De Gouden Kooi (The Golden Cage) was a Dutch reality show based on the original concept for Big Brother, airing a few years after the Dutch version of that show ended. It was even crueler than Big Brother was — the housemates each had to pay €10,000 to get in, and the prize money of €1,000,000 (plus the fully-furnished house!) was given to the last person left at the end. That's it. No rules. People had to bully each other until everybody except one walked out. It's widely considered the worst television show in the history of the world by the Dutch. (In case you're wondering how it went, the residents all had massive orgies and the biggest Jerkass won.)
The WB's Superstar USA, an American Idol parody that ran for seven episodes in 2004 and was sadistic from start to finish. The format was inverted — while saying they wanted a good singer, the judges praised the horrible ones and mocked the genuinely good ones, a mentality that almost certainly scarred someone for life. The "coaching" sessions consisted of more lying to the contestants, mostly to inflate their egos but also to have them emulate those with actual talent. It didn't help that all the contestants were so deluded as to actually believe them. These sessions by definition defeat the concept of the show — even terrible singers will get at least a tiny bit better with practice and encouragement, meaning that you have a search for a worst singer and each of whom are getting slightly better every week.
Fearful that the audiences for the live performances would not be able to keep their composure (i.e., boo and throw stuff at every contestant), executive producer Mike Fleiss asked who had heard of the "One Wish Foundation" (which doesn't exist) and, upon getting some raised hands that probably thought he said/meant "Make-A-Wish" (or were plants), said that the contestants were all terminally-ill and being granted this wish by said fictional Foundation. The eventual winner, a woman who could barely sing and was undoubtedly picked for her boobs, was told the truth after it all ended and didn't seem all that offended by it. The show was considered by Fleiss to be a prank, with lying to the audience being "the only way to get it to work". Unsurprisingly, the winning singer's album never materialized.
Many people claim that Shopper's Casino is the worst game show of all time, and it's not hard to see why. Jeff Maxwell does a pretty bad job as the host, and the models act like they're only there for the paycheck. The set is poorly constructed, which makes it hard for the cameramen to get good shots of the games, which were just dumbed-down versions of blackjack, roulette and chuck-a-luck. They attempt to sell "bargain items" to the home viewers that aren't actually bargains at all, and worse, they deceive said home viewers with a "home caller" that sounds like they're actually using the PA system in the studio, thinking the viewers wouldn't know the difference. It bombed so hard and vanished from the airwaves so quickly that, until recently, its mere existence was thought to be an urban legend. Game Show Garbage has a rare review of the show here, so you can see for yourself how bad it really was.
Home Alone 4, a made-for-TV sequel to the theatrical series, intended to be a Pilot Movie for a TV series. The "kid sees bad guys that adults can't see" had been overused by then (including 3, though that one was decent), and your head will explode if you try to connect this film with the first two. Kevin's nominally a year younger, but visually more like eight years younger; Buzz is five years younger; the McCallisters are rich and divorced; and Marv's played by French Stewart. Seriously, what was up with that? Does anyone really think French Stewart looks like Daniel Stern? Oh, and for those watching the Home Alone series for the traps — 4 failed there as well. There's three traps, and two of them are built into the house. Yeah. A dumbwaiter and a revolving wall? Not ingenious. Thankfully, it bombed in the ratings, killing off any chance that audiences would be subjected to Kevin's antics on a weekly basis.
The low-budget, poorly-conceived TV movie based on the Generation X comic book. It starred Matt Frewer as a villainous ad exec that uses his mind control device to cause mass flatulence at a board meeting. The '90s, ladies and gentlemen. You can read more about it at number one on this list.
Hallmark Channel
Shark Swarm, a Hallmark Channel movie which clocks in at 164 minutes despite not having enough content for half that. The story is full of Plot Holes (the big one being nobody in this small town notices when so many people suddenly go missing) and bloats the run time with irrelevant subplots about uninteresting characters. The movie takes itself far too seriously, throwing in an AnviliciousGreen Aesop, and worst of all, the actual shark attacks, the things people expect to see in a movie with this title, are lame. They just alternate between shots of unnamed extras thrashing about and shots of the same CG sharks (with the camera zooming in and outinstead of actual attacking), with almost no variety. The only time a shark actually bites someone on camera lasts only half a second! Also, it's difficult to have a blood-filled horror film on The Hallmark Channel. The movie does try toward the end to use the terror caused by shark attacks to set up a Heartwarming Moment, but by that point it's too little too late. The excessive length and total failure as a monster movie have put it past redemption. Matt Murray of Corn Pone Flicks wrote an entertaining review of the film.
KDOC
On December 31, 2012, local Los Angeles (well, technically Orange County) independent station KDOC decided to air a New Year's Eve special hosted by Jamie Kennedy. Yes, that Jamie Kennedy. Unfortunately, that was only the tip of the iceberg, as the world found out after Patton Oswalt tweeted about it: there were awkward glitches and dead air, the beginning of an interview with Shannon Elizabeth accidentally started with a shot of Kennedy moping about on stage, hot mics picked up strange discussions peppered with F-bombs from the host and crew, racist sketches where Jamie Kennedy played a Mayan (while dressed like a stereotypical Native American, no less) who went to the Commerce Casino to try to regain his people's lost gold, a potentially drunk Macy Gray and an uncensored(!) Bone Thugs-n-Harmony serenaded the audience awaiting the arrival of the year 1999, Kennedy proclaimed that he would "see you in 2024!", and a fight broke out on stage during the (silent) credits. It has to be seen to be believed (though given how desperately KDOC seems to want to consign this to the memory hole, you may have to make do with Nathan Rabin's account for the AV Club). Kennedy has since claimed that the entire thing was meant to be that bad.
Destination: Infestation is an unbearably awful 2007 Follow the Leader-type TV movie that was made to cash in on the Snakes on a Plane B-movie craze: this time there's ants instead of snakes. Ignoring how the premise doesn't work since ants cannot survive at a cruising altitude, there's a total of 10 minutes of these bugs in the film, most of it consisting of short shots of the swarms and one very lame attack scene that comes off as if the writers forgot about the movie's concept. Though it's a Canadian production, there's an insane amount of Plot Holes and geographical errors; for one, WestJet doesn't travel to Colombia. There's bad acting abounds and awful CGI too. The funniest thing about this whole fiasco? It premiered on Lifetime, the same channel who airs such gems as Cyber Seduction and Someone Else's Child.
National Lampoons Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure. This "sequel" is often considered by even hardcore fans of the National Lampoon's Vacation series to be one of the worst sources of sequelitis ever. The idea is that Cousin Eddie is the main character, and his boss fires him but sends him and his family on a vacation of the South Pacific, where things predictably go wrong. It abuses every single "stranded on an island" cliche in the book and often resorts to recycled slapstick gags from the first movie which somehow manage to be completely boring this time around. Despite taking place sometime after Vegas Vacation, the children inexplicably haven't aged, and trying to connect this to the film canon will practically cause your head to explode.
The film will ruin everything you love about the first movie, and is one of the most poorly-received TV movies from NBC, which also ended the tradition of TV film from NBC for quite some time. Even more baffling, it's not even a sequel to Christmas Vacation, but rather, the first film in the whole series, Vacation (for example, the original Audrey, Dana Barron, reprises her role). And even the cameo from Eric Idle as the accident-prone Englishman from European Vacation failed to please fans.
Back in 2008, German television channel ProSieben produced a horror movie "parody" called Halloween Horror Hostel. Imagine Seltzer And Friedberg doing even less researching than usual, then go a bit further, and there we are. Just to give you a hint about how bad this movie is — it begins with a few people sitting in a car while the radio talks about a hockey player called Michael Myers gone missing. You sure you don't mean Jason? What follows are thousands of references and toilet humor. Just like a ______ Movie, except even cheaper. The best/worst part is the Overly Long Gag of one dude who thought he was invisible or something like that, walking veeeerrryyy slowly around with a pillow in front of his head.
Highlander The Source, a Sci Fi Channel original. The film has almost nothing to do with the original Highlander and completely alters the fundamental premise of the series with "The Source", which is apparently the source of immortality (you'd think they'd have mentioned that before) and (if allowed into what passes for continuity) retcons the way Immortals have functioned for the entire series. It also seems to be out to distance itself from the Highlander TV franchise as much as possible, killing Joe Dawson, and possibly Methos, and breaking Duncan's iconic katana, the driving force of the plot is a Romantic Plot Tumor which results in a Gainax Ending. The villain's not intimidating, the fight choreography's terrible, and a lot of plot elements don't make sense. You know it belongs here when Highlander II The Quickening, the all-time go-to example of a bad sequel, is compared favorably to this. Spoony expounds further.
The Sci Fi Channel (nowSy Fy) made an "adaptation" of A Wizard of Earthsea that was blasted and disowned by Ursula K. Le Guin herself. The Sci-Fi production killed much of the subtle cultural stuff LeGuin had tried to put in her original work. Talk about wasting Isabella Rossellini. Worse, SyFy then used the fact that they had the American rights to produce Earthsea media to keep Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea movie from coming out in America for some time (which eventually saw a limited theatrical release in August 2010).
The UPNIron Chef specials. The idea of an American Iron Chef wasn't bad; in fact, it would be pulled off successfully later. The biggest difference between the two American Chef shows? Food Network's version understands and respects the source material while, at the same time, realizing that American viewers were watching mainly for the competitive aspects (the original show's appeal to Japanese audiences, meanwhile, was watching celebrities engaged in the intimate act of eating). The result was a show that's faithful to the original while still going in its own directions. All UPN's people understood was "Wacky foreigners acting like cooking is a sport!", resulting in commentators who paid more attention to the cheering studio audience than the actual cooking (and who couldn't tell a melonballer from a spork). Just about the only element UPN got right was William Shatner as the Large Ham Chairman, very much in line with Takeshi Kaga's performance.
Other/Unknown
Paparazzi Princess: The Paris Hilton Story. This docudrama/biopic/whatever you want to want to call it of the 2006 Paris Hilton court case is often considered to be distasteful, disgraceful and largely inaccurate. Paris, Nicole, and Nikki are played by people who look nothing like them, but that is the least of the film's worries — they are horribly wooden and seem to have the personalities of department store mannequins. The film is often very obviously low budget, with awful cinematography and and a soundtrack of original music because they couldn't get the rights to existing music. The resulting music is just sad. Furthermore, the film can't even decide if it wants to be a depiction of Paris' party girl lifestyle or her legal issues, and towards the end it tries to depict her jail time as the most depressing event in human history, portraying her as someone who needs medical attention (there's even a scene of her going for electroshock therapy). The film was blasted by the Hilton family themselves, aired on the station it premiered only once, and it destroyed a lot of the careers of the actors involved.
