The Worst TV Shows of 2015
I begin this annual list with the usual explanation: The list is based on shows I watched more than one episode of, and doesn’t bother to include some shows that are, year-in and year-out, so bad they don’t need mentioning (well, okay, for the sake of example: Keeping Up with the Kardashians; Criminal Minds; Family Guy). Many of the shows on this list had at least one element in them that suggested they could have been good (usually a fine actor), but still they failed in a notable way.
Enough explanation; here’s the list, in alphabetical order, because ranking degrees of worst-ness is just too darn depressing.
Backstrom (Fox): A prime example of A Good Performer Stuck In A Bad Show, Rainn Wilson’s grumpy cop in Oregon series wanted to be “Gregory House Solving Crime” but instead came off as an attempt to do a comedy-drama about a politically-incorrect goofball. Wilson and show creator Hart Hanson (Bones) are very smart people; they were simply defeated by a concept that was too derivative of too many other TV shows.
The Brink (HBO): There are few things less funny than a political satire that thinks it’s being both hilarious and Making Serious Points, qualities that characterized The Brink all too well. A strong cast including Tim Robbins, Jack Black, and Pablo Schreiber could not raise this impending-nuclear-war slapstick hokum to the level on which it wanted to be considered.
CNBC Republican Debate (CNBC): So anxious were the personalities of this financial network to achieve new prominence with the huge audiences that have been tuning in to these debates, they ended up inciting a chaotic riot of half-articulated answers, hostile questions, and zero enlightenment for the voting public.
The Duggar Family Scandal Coverage (TLC and various channels): The nauseating news that Josh Duggar had molested two of his sisters led to lots of scrambling on the part of TLC, for whom 19 Kids and Counting was its biggest hit. The channel tried to salvage the show but were forced by public opinion to cancel it… yet not without the possibility of a Duggar spin-off some time in the future. The initial scandal’s fall-out included some Duggar family sanctimony on the part of Josh’s parents in the midst of some awkward interviews with the victims on Fox News, and a general run of tabloid-TV overkill. Yet another, particularly painful, example of why it’s not a good idea for networks, producers, and families themselves to idealize families on reality-TV.
Hand of God (Amazon): As he proved on Sons of Anarchy, Ron Perlman is an actor not given to subtlety, so why on Earth would anyone offer him a starring role in a show that’s all about a ragingly loud, crude, self-absorbed egomaniac? This Amazon original was a show best experienced while wearing ear plugs, and even then, no fun. Not even the presence of the eternally-excellent Dana Delany cannot save this thing.
Marco Polo (Netflix): In the Year of Too Much TV, there were a lot of new series that dumped out their full season of hours all at once, the better to binge. Or in this case, purge: This Netflix super-duper historical epic started out just not-bad enough to make you feel obliged to keep going for a while — until you came to realize the production was more in love with its spectacle than it was with creating characters or contextualizing history in an interesting way. After that realization, it settled into being an over-stuffed bore.
Sex Box (WE Tv): Don’t remember it? This was the one that had couples enter a big blue box, engage in sex, and then emerge to answer questions from a team of sex therapists. Why? Because, said one sexpert on the panel, “post-sex, people are at their most vulnerable and honest.” Oh, please. Was Sex Box pornographic? I wish: It was a snoozy drag with dollops of vulgarity dripping all over this mess.
True Detective (HBO): Every critic’s favorite punching bag of 2015 is this excessively maligned follow-up to an anthology series whose first season was among 2014’s best. So if I say it’s been “excessively” denigrated, what’s it doing on this list? Because while I don’t think it was as incoherent as many of its detractors said (as hard-boiled mystery, its plot was really no murkier than one to be found in your average Ross Macdonald novel), show creator Nic Pizzolatto ruined any pleasure we might have taken in the tough performances by Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, and Taylor Kitsch by filling their mouths with the kind of pretentious dialogue that makes you want to throw a shoe at your TV.
Truth Be Told (NBC): To be fair, its time-period companion, Undateable Live, could have been a contender for The Year’s Worst Sitcom, but Truth Be Told, from its title to its organizing concept — what white and black friends talk about — was really dire. Poor Tone Bell and Mark-Paul Gosselaar — in the first episode alone, they were required to leer at a babysitter whom they had to prove performed in porn films, and the show just got worse from there.
Wicked City (ABC): The whole serial-killer genre has really been played out on television (I’m not even a fan of the much-admired-by-other-critics Hannibal), but this one — set in 1980s Los Angeles and starring Ed Westwick as a supposedly charming yet actually so-so-creepy lothario who hooks up with Erika Christensen to go on a series of thrill-kills — was so bad, it was one of the few new fall series yanked from the air quickly, after a mere three episodes.
Tomorrow: The Year’s Best Comedies
