Worst TV programmes ever

BuilderPlumber

What are the worst programmes (other than the obvious stuff) to find a place on TV? Let's not include all reality TV and all them The Voice type competitions, and let's take The Late Late Show and poor chatshows (e.g. The Frontline) in general out of the equation too. Let's not include regular soaps either as I am aware these generate feelings of the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum too! What apart from these would be the TV shows the drives one mad? And why?

gmisk

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

What are the worst programmes (other than the obvious stuff) to find a place on TV? Let's not include all reality TV and all them The Voice type competitions, and let's take The Late Late Show and poor chatshows (e.g. The Frontline) in general out of the equation too. Let's not include regular soaps either as I am aware these generate feelings of the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum too! What apart from these would be the TV shows the drives one mad? And why?

Everybody loves Raymond and the big bang theory both horrendous TV shows IMO

twilight_singer

Give my head peace.

Northern Irish "sitcom"

Absolute poison.

Surely this one is too obvious...

I once downloaded an episode of Mrs. Brown's Boys to see what the fuss was all about. It was the Christmas episode. I genuinely thought I had accidentally downloaded a parody. Easily one of the worst things I have ever seen, but when you add the popularity of the show to the equation, it compounds an extra dimension of unfathomable confusion. Not only is it garbage, but huge numbers of people love it. It's identical to the fake show in Extras, "When the Whistle Blows". It's identical to a fake show created to emphasis that a man has completely sold out for lowest common dominator rubbish.

dominatinMC

Many nominees for this title, and previous posters have given two outstanding candidates in Mrs Brown's Boys, and The Big Bang Theory. However, I would rate these as Emmy-worthy in comparison to the utter tripe that is Two and a Half Men. Hellish

Blue Badger

The American version of The Inbetweeners was an affront to humanity.

And that's putting it delicately.

snowflaker

the gilmore girls
7th Heaven

kunst nugget

Upwardly Mobile. Nothing else can compare to it in terms of awfulness.

Fr Tod Umptious

kunst nugget wrote: »

Upwardly Mobile. Nothing else can compare to it in terms of awfulness.

Beat me too it, it's over 20 years old and still sends shivers.

Makes Mrs. Brown's Boys look like a classic.

BuyersRemorse

Apart from Mrs Brown's Boys, there's Citizen Khan, also on the BBC (and by the looks of it, sharing the same set). There was also a Jason Byrne sitcom a couple of years ago which made Mrs Brown look like Fawlty Towers by comparison.

Thepoet85

Legend of the seeker. It was insulting to anyone who read the books.

frostyjacks

Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. I wish somebody would take the f**king thing away. Absolute dross, really forced humour.

Tipping Point. Watching somebody play a penny pusher, seriouly WTF? If you saw a crowd of people down the arcade watching somebody play one, you'd think they're not wise.

Thepoet85

frostyjacks wrote:

Tipping Point. Watching somebody play a penny pusher, seriouly WTF? If you saw a crowd of people down the arcade watching somebody play one, you'd think they're not wise.

I like Tipping Point. But l like most quiz shows all the same.

robbe

Quite possibly not the worst but getting there - Leave it to Mrs O'Brien.....think Father Ted played as a true life drama - it was meant to be a comedy but I defy anyone to find a laugh in there anywhere. Didn't really watch it just vaguely recall it being there and shuddering.

http://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0331/778611-leave-it-to-mrs-obrien/

NinetyForNone

The Cassidys...

BuilderPlumber

Irish comedy definitely dominates .. and rightly so! Mrs Brown's Boys Christmas specials are certainly among the worst. Some other desperate ones have been mentioned too. I'd add The Walshes, Wagon's Den and the like too. Away from comedy, I'd have to place The Big Bow Wow in there too.

BuilderPlumber

Deleted User wrote: »

Surely this one is too obvious...

I once downloaded an episode of Mrs. Brown's Boys to see what the fuss was all about. It was the Christmas episode. I genuinely thought I had accidentally downloaded a parody. Easily one of the worst things I have ever seen, but when you add the popularity of the show to the equation, it compounds an extra dimension of unfathomable confusion. Not only is it garbage, but huge numbers of people love it. It's identical to the fake show in Extras, "When the Whistle Blows". It's identical to a fake show created to emphasis that a man has completely sold out for lowest common dominator rubbish.

The Christmas episodes of Mrs Brown's Boys are among the worst drivel ever committed to film. The first series of it in 2011 or so was mildly funny and escapism from the then depressing diet of doom and gloom on chatshows like The Frontline. By now, MBB has only gotten more and more idiotic. Those Christmas specials of last year and the year before are particularly awful.

Daroxtar

The Roaring Twenties http://www.rte.ie/tv/theroaringtwenties/

TerrorFirmer

Big Bang Theory and Mrs. Brown's Boys spring to mind for me. The former maybe not the worst thing I have literally ever seen committed to film, but it's the insane popularity that just leaves me baffled beyond words. I mean, I think something like Two and a Half Men is objectively quite terrible, but actually a welcome tonic compared to having to sit through BBT.

Moving to sort of more high-budget, cinematic TV - that show Terra Nova from a few years ago, hyped as the next big thing. Just so astoundingly bad you have to wonder how any expensive many-multi-million euro productions can pass through so many expansive, expensive production stages with endorsement, agreement, et al all around and still end up like that.

That show 'Olympus' on SyFy too - the backdrops look like they belong in a Resident Evil game from the PSX era. Why you'd attempt to do grandiose, large scale storytelling on a shoestring budget is beyond me. The result is as you'd expect and occasionally even worse.

I thought the US Inbetweeners was dull and pointless but not inherently god-awful, but....check out the pilot to the UK version of That 70's Show. It's painfully bad, and almost impossible to sit through, and looks like it was actually made in the 60's rather than the late 90's.

On a similar note....the US pilot of The IT Crowd.

Lorelli!

If not the worst, it's at least one of the most depressing looking, non funny shows...Birds of a Feather

Sam Kade

frostyjacks wrote: »

Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. I wish somebody would take the f**king thing away. Absolute dross, really forced humour.

Tipping Point. Watching somebody play a penny pusher, seriouly WTF? If you saw a crowd of people down the arcade watching somebody play one, you'd think they're not wise.

You actually watch those two programs?

snowflaker

Thepoet85 wrote: »

I like Tipping Point. But l like most quiz shows all the same.

It is the stupidest quiz ever, I've seen harder questions on This Morning competitions!!!

darkdubh

One rightly forgotten atrocity from RTE was The Last Furlong. Simon Delaney from Batchelor's Walk playing a Portugese guy with accompanying stupid accent.

Unearthly

Terra Nova is s good shout for non comedy.

I liked the premise so much that i stubbornly watched through a few episodes before admitting this is a catastrophe

JaMarcusHustle

I remember watching the pilot Of Under The Dome and thinking "this is some of the very worst acting I've seen in a show". I nearly always give shows a few episodes, but I just couldn't give it another try.

Meeoow

Vicar of Dibley. Not funny at all. Put me right off Dawn French.

silverharp

the last X files series and the Macgyver reboot

frostyjacks

Sam Kade wrote: »

You actually watch those two programs?

Tipping Point would be on in the work canteen. The other half watches Takeaway, so I just have to grin and bear it.

Buttros

I try to watch some of the Netflix originals when they come out. There has been a few clangers but "Haters Back Off" was the worst ive ever seen. I don't think I lasted 5 mins.

duvetdayss

Anything to do with Daniel O'Donnell sweet jaysus

Stroke Politics

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUUDr0C-as

Cop Rock. A musical cop series from 1990. An hour every Monday night on
Network 2 I will never have again, as flat mate owned the TV and the remote control...

Cantona's Collars

Has anyone witnessed the horror that is Say yes to the dress? A show about 21 year old women picking out wedding dresses.

pickarooney

frostyjacks wrote: »

Tipping Point would be on in the work canteen. The other half watches Takeaway, so I just have to grin and bear it.

Why not.. do something else while she watches it? Sounds like a cop out and you actually love watching it because it's so bad.

Go Harvey Go

Tipping Point may not be the greatest game show ever created... but, for heaven's sake, it's not the worst game show ever created either.

After all, it has general knowledge questions - something which can't be said for Deal or No Deal (which it pretty much killed off) or our own Winning Streak. And for the most part, if you don't answer these questions correctly, you don't get to put any counters into the machine.

Also, let's not forget that, like most other game shows these days, the contestants are chosen for their personalities and not for their general knowledge. And most of them are likeable, regardless of how much they know.

Finally, there's the pressure of being in that studio with the hot lights, the rolling cameras, and the knowledge that millions of people are going to be watching. And some of the remarkably wrong answers on Tipping Point - and indeed on shows like Pointless, The Chase, or from an earlier era the Weakest Link - come about simply because of that pressure.

Again, I'm not saying in any way that Tipping Point is a really great game show - I'm just trying to explain why I don't think it deserves to get so much stick.

And there are at least five game shows I could name that are/were genuinely worse - and which I could provide clips of, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIaipAc2oME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkPoPVb-eeE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11CgGp-5sZg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-PYoD-DsHA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTzhLSut-I

TheChevron

The Wall

Go Harvey Go

TheChevron wrote: »

The Wall

You mean Hole in the Wall.

Yes, that was pretty rubbish too.

loyatemu

TheChevron wrote: »

The Wall

that looks great!

__Alex__

Ally McBeal and Dawson's Creek have to be up there. Shudder.

walshb

These 5 shows are absolutely appalling:

Brown's Boys
Big Bang Theory
Ray D'Arcy Sat nite
X Factor
Ireland's The Voice!

walshb

Oh, and any show those two twats, Ant and Dec are on!

Ol' Donie

Anything with Philip Scofield.

No problem with him, but anything he's been on since Blue Peter is lowest common denominator vacuous horsesh*t.

Nekarsulm

When you mention quiz shows, how can you leave out "Going for Gold"?
Peculiar attempt to embarrass contestants from across Europe by asking questions in their second or third language. Months of cringe, and all to win a weeks holiday in Australia....

walshb

Highway with Harry Secombe...as Bernard Manning once said. If I see that screeching bas€&rd, Harry Seecombe on Highway I'll knock the cu*t down!

George White

Deleted User wrote: »

Surely this one is too obvious...

I once downloaded an episode of Mrs. Brown's Boys to see what the fuss was all about. It was the Christmas episode. I genuinely thought I had accidentally downloaded a parody. Easily one of the worst things I have ever seen, but when you add the popularity of the show to the equation, it compounds an extra dimension of unfathomable confusion. Not only is it garbage, but huge numbers of people love it. It's identical to the fake show in Extras, "When the Whistle Blows". It's identical to a fake show created to emphasis that a man has completely sold out for lowest common dominator rubbish.

What kills the series is the nepotism, that O'Carroll doesn't seem to realise that his friends and family bar his sister and possibly son, while suitable for an adult pantomime stage show can't work on a sitcom. The daughter/daughter-in-law are too wooden and come across as too cold and dislikable, the ill-suited "serious" storylines show that he is trying to be John Sullivan, but the storylines e.g. "Mark is illiterate" feel like a sub-On the Move educational series made by RTE for 12 year olds.

Go Harvey Go

walshb wrote: »

Oh, and any show those two twats, Ant and Dec are on!

Even SM:TV?!? :eek: :eek: :eek:

Ol' Donie wrote: »

Anything with Philip Scofield.

No problem with him, but anything he's been on since Blue Peter is lowest common denominator vacuous horsesh*t.

You're thinking of either the Broom Cupboard or Going Live!.

And I'm not sure I'd call The Cube "lowest common denominator vacuous horsesh*t"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YrxROC87Ag

Nekarsulm wrote: »

When you mention quiz shows, how can you leave out "Going for Gold"?
Peculiar attempt to embarrass contestants from across Europe by asking questions in their second or third language. Months of cringe, and all to win a weeks holiday in Australia....

I'd put Tipping Point in the same category as Going for Gold - a popular game show mainly because it's a bit rubbish.

I'd put 3-2-1, Strike it Lucky/Rich and even Bullseye in this category too...

On the other hand, the shows I provided clips of in post #34 were much more rubbish and much less popular.

Go Harvey Go

Speaking of GFG... the French version, Questions Pour Un Champion, is still on the air after nearly 30 years. :eek: :eek:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvuDbs30Heo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACCh1YsTjNM

jcsoulinger

Modern Family, nauseatingly unfunny, it's popularity only adds to my distain.

Impractical Jokers, just terrible.

ButtersSuki

I have never seen an episode of Upwardly Mobile or The Cassidys, but given the love (and by love I mean hate) expressed for them on this and other threads over the years, I actually want to see them to see for myself how bad they are!

freshpopcorn

I find those Reality Bits documentaries are terrible sometimes!

kunst nugget

ButtersSuki wrote: »

I have never seen an episode of Upwardly Mobile or The Cassidys, but given the love (and by love I mean hate) expressed for them on this and other threads over the years, I actually want to see them to see for myself how bad they are!

There's a couple of episodes of Upwardly Mobile on Youtube if you feel like losing the will to live.

SpaceCowb0y

Mrs Brown's Boys

Absolute tripe! do not understand how people find this funny, it is the ultimate cringe fest at best