The Worst TV Shows of 2025
"All's Fair" (Disney/Ser Baffo)
What were the biggest television duds of the past year? On this page we rank the lowest-scoring first-year TV series (including limited series) debuting in the United States between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding based on scores from December 16, 2025 and must have at least 4 reviews from professional critics to qualify.
Why are there so few titles with red Metascores? Keep in mind that a decline in the overall number of professional TV critics in recent years means that only the more major television programs actually get reviewed (and get a Metascore). This allows some lousy shows (and most reality shows) to slip under the radar and avoid inclusion in this list. What you see here are the crummy titles notable enough to merit attention from multiple publications.
#10: Countdown (Prime Video)
1 / 10
Amazon's action-filled (well, theoretically) conspiracy thriller series from frequent Dick Wolf collaborator Derek Haas stars Jensen Ackles as an LAPD detective recruited for a secretive, multi-agency task force after a Homeland Security officer is murdered in broad daylight. Critics were bored by the lifeless and unoriginal drama, and Amazon canceled the series a few months ago.
"Countdown starts to run out of steam around the seventh of its 10 episodes. That leads to a couple of hours of wheel-spinning followed by a finale so bafflingly anti-climactic that you'd need a team of whip-smart detectives to figure out how things went so badly wrong." —Ross McIndoe, Slant
#8 (tie): Celebrity Bear Hunt (Netflix)
2 / 10
The twist in this Netflix reality series is that the bear is the hunter, not the hunted. Or maybe it's that the bear is actually Bear Grylls. Or maybe it's that the term "celebrity" encompasses a retired rugby player. At any rate, watching a dozen C-list British celebrities systematically hunted down by Grylls in a Costa Rican jungle is much less fun than it sounds. And it won't return for a second season.
"Celebrity Bear Hunt is kitsch without being camp, and overcooked where it ought to be raw." —Nick Hilton, The Independent
#8 (tie): The Z-Suite (Tubi)
3 / 10
Is the star power of Lauren Graham enough of a reason to finally tune in to a Tubi original? You might want to check that Metascore first. This generation-clash comedy finds the former Gilmore Girls star and Nico Santos (Superstore) playing executives at an ad agency who are forced out and replaced with the firm's Gen Z social media team. Instead of going quietly, they hatch a plan to take down their younger counterparts. The result divided critics, with many complaining about the cliché-filled writing and the show's no-budget look.
"So the series is populated by badly conceived characters played by actors who have clearly been directed to perform at irritating volume, and every one of its sets look cheap and underpopulated. But I'm a generous sort, and The Z-Suite isn't a total disaster. There is some small improvement after the first two installments, especially when it comes to [Graham's] Monica." —Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter
#7: The Abandons (Netflix)
4 / 10
Finally debuting in December after four years in development, this action-filled and female-led Western series from Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter is set in the Washington Territory in 1854, where a group of renegade families do battle with corrupt government forces and each other in an attempt to save their land and survive on the fringes of society. Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey lead the large and talented ensemble cast. So far, so good. But Sutter himself abandoned the production due to creative differences with Netflix toward the end of filming, and the end result is a poorly written and plodding Deadwood knockoff, according to critics.
"A pretender through and through, piling on clichés without any sense of authenticity, rhythm, or originality." —Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
#6: With Love, Meghan (Netflix)
5 / 10
Yes, the Duchess of Sussex (you know her from Suits!) hosts a lifestyle show on Netflix in which she hosts celebrity chefs and other minor celebrities in her fake TV house and pretends to cook and garden and craft in anticipation of their arrival. Despite the poor reviews, Meghan's celebrity status brought in quite a few viewers for its January debut, and Netflix quickly scheduled a second season (and holiday special) for later in 2025. Given the lackluster numbers for the later episodes, a third season seems unlikely.
"There isn't enough here to justify the running time, nor its star's belief we'll keep watching. The show plays out like a forced march, one in which Meghan's guests must, as the price of getting to share an afternoon in a made-for-TV kitchen with her, praise her first." —Daniel D'Addario, Variety
#5: The Baldwins (TLC)
6 / 10
Every crisis manager knows that when your client faces a trial for the wrongful death of the cinematographer of the movie he is working on after a tragic on-set shooting, the next step is to get that client his own reality show highlighting his loving and caring family. And so we have The Baldwins, in which Alec Baldwin, his wife Hilaria, and their seven children go about their post- Rust lives in front of a camera crew. Viewers expecting drama or revelations should look elsewhere, say critics.
"While purporting to pull back the curtain and reveal the real life that happens behind the scrim of scandal and celebrity—to find out, in Hilaria's words, 'where do you go from a tragedy'—the show ends up mostly pasting on a frozen rictus grin, whose dark underside we catch only glimpses of." —Naomi Fry, The New Yorker
#4: Simon Cowell: The Next Act (Netflix)
7 / 10
Can longtime reality series judge and music executive Simon Cowell discover the next great boy band? And do so by gathering 16 teen contestants on a Netflix reality series set in Miami and slowly whittling down the group until what's left is (presumably) a chart-topping act? We're going to go ahead and say "no."
"A show so dated and derivative that it's as if the last 20 years never happened. But it's easy to see why Cowell wanted to make it. This is a vanity project from a man desperate for relevance and deeply bored." —Anita Singh, The Telegraph
#3: The Hunting Party (NBC)
8 / 10
Melissa Roxburgh (Manifest) heads the cast of a crime procedural that focuses on a task force charged with tracking down a group of dangerous killers who have just escaped from a secret prison. NBC executives liked the 10-episode debut season enough to bring The Hunting Party back for a second season (which launches in January), but critics deemed it a wholly unremarkable mashup of Criminal Minds and The Blacklist.
"The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren't that surprising or are pretty much useless." —Joel Keller, Decider
#2: Monster: The Ed Gein Story (Netflix)
9 / 10
Following installments about Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers, the third and worst chapter in the Netflix anthology series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan centers on the real-life 1940s/'50s murderer and grave robber Ed Gein, played by Charlie Hunnam in a cast that also features Vicky Krieps, Suzanna Son, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Lesley Manville, and Laurie Metcalf. Despite The Ed Gein Story's attempt to add an extra layer by also examining Gein's enduring influence on Hollywood horror films, critics found the miniseries tasteless, over-acted, and unilluminating.
"This isn't just a completely botched series; it's senseless, perverse, and exists outside the realm of narrative entertainment because there's absolutely no one to root for and nothing for viewers to walk away with." —Greg MacArthur, Screen Rant
#1: All's Fair (Hulu)
10 / 10
Metacritic's Official Worst New TV Show of 2025. And speaking of Ryan Murphy, here's the worst show he has ever created—and it's not even close. All's Fair is a colorful legal procedural centering on a trio of wealthy L.A. divorce attorneys (Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Kim Kardashian) who leave their male-dominated firm to form their own practice. Glenn Close, Teyana Taylor, and Murphy regular Sarah Paulson also star.
In spite of—or quite possibly because of —the scathing reviews, the show is a hit. Hulu quickly renewed the series for a second season after it became one of the most talked-about new shows of 2025. Of course, it was buzzy mainly for two reasons: The presence of Kardashian, and the stream of reviews using such glowing terms as "ludicrous," "clumsy," "noxiously dumb," "simply bad," "nausea inducing," and a "smorgasbord of schlock."
"Fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible." —Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
"No words yet invented can fully convey just how much you need to avoid this disastrous show." —David Opie, Empire
"It's a cavalcade of wigs and screeching in search of truth." —Kayleigh Donaldson, The Wrap
