Worst TV Shows Of 2025 (So Far)

Loving television means celebrating the best it has to offer… and also calling out the series that really miss the mark. To that end: It’s time for our picks for the worst TV shows of 2025 so far!

Among the latest inductees into our Hall of Shame are a celeb reality show no one asked for, a procedural that feels like a pale imitation of what came before, a prestige drama event that left a bad taste in our mouths, and a highly disappointing offering from a usually solid sci-fi universe. And, point of order: This year’s list includes not only TV shows but also a couple of TV movies we couldn’t let slide.

Now look, we get it: Maybe a show we loathed and you loved is on this list. It’s OK! We all like bad things sometimes! Or maybe there’s a series you were sure was going to be here but escaped our ire. So once you’ve scrolled through the list below, make sure to hit the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Whoever thought the private life of “30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, was prime reality fodder should probably reevaluate their priorities. This mess of a TLC reality show hit the same several notes — Alec is old! Hilaria is a lot younger than he is! They have seven kids! Life is chaos! — ad nauseum all season long in a manner that was probably meant to be endearing but which just made us wish they’d stop talking. Never was that more true than when we were supposed to feel bad for Alec and his involvement in an involuntary manslaughter trial related to the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.” (Perspective, anyone?) Let’s end this on a more upbeat, though still frustrating note: Does anyone in the family remember that Baldwin Child No. 7, Ilaria, actually has a name? Because the only way they refer to her is as “the baby.” What gives? — Kimberly Roots

The true-crime miniseries market has been saturated for a couple of years now, and our collective reaction to disturbing real-life events is often, “Ooh, that’d make a good show.” And yet, Hulu’s approach to the story of Natalia Grace — a young girl with dwarfism whose 2010 adoption by an American family went horribly south — felt uniquely icky. For one, the show’s first four episodes were told from the perspective of Natalia’s adoptive parents, followed by four from Natalia’s point of view… but waiting until Episode 5 to offer Natalia’s side of the story made everything feel lopsided and unfair. Plus, the tone was a jumbled mess of harrowing drama, misplaced comedy and bizarre needle drops — a particular Episode 2 scene still haunts us months later — and Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass were woefully miscast as Kristine and Michael Barnett. Kudos to Christina Hendricks, though, for redeeming things a bit with her portrayal of Cynthia Mans. — Rebecca Luther

You know that meme that says, “Your Mom: We have [fill-in-the-blank] at home!”? This Canadian import feels like the “Law & Order” series you have at home: mildly resembling the Dick Wolf shows you love, but not… quite… it. That’s no shade to series leads Aden Young and Kathleen Munroe, who are doing the job they were hired to do in a procedural that feels like it’s straight out of 1995. Maybe the series was doomed the moment it was given the “Criminal Intent” moniker: After all, very few fictional law-enforcement professionals can live up to the dream team that was the original “Criminal Intent” duo of Dets. Goren and Eames. — K.R.

After “Succession,” we’d sign up to watch pretty much anything Jesse Armstrong wrote… but we may have to revise that opinion after suffering through his massive miscalculation of an HBO movie. He attracted a stellar cast, led by Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman, to play chummy billionaires on a luxury ski weekend, and he served up obscene displays of wealth and savage insults just like he did on “Succession.” But he forgot to include any of the nuance or humanity that made the Roy family palatable, leaving us with a bitter stew of toxic entitlement.

The billionaires were insufferably smug from the start and only got more so as the story evolved, leading to an unforgivably callous scene where they plotted to murder one of their own just to add a few more zeroes to their net worths. (Even the Roys wouldn’t stoop to that level. We think.) Many people couldn’t watch “Succession” because they found the characters so unlikeable — and after “Mountainhead,” we know just how they feel. — Dave Nemetz

We aren’t kidding when we say the very first terrible scene of Netflix’s medical drama more or less landed the show on this list. If only some bad CGI had been its worst offense! Unfortunately, the one-and-done series was mired in clichéd moments and cringey dialogue, like this workplace argument between love interests Danny Simms and Xander Phillips: “You went to HR because I told you I loved you, and you couldn’t take that, so you pushed me away. Because your mom walked out one night and never came back. That’s what this is.” (Oh, brother.) Even worse, “Pulse” seemed to roll its eyes at other soapy medical dramas while also landing in that category itself; the result was a generic hospital show that made no effort to subvert expectations of the genre. — R.L.

Michelle Yeoh was great in small doses as unforgiving ruler Philippa Georgiou on “Star Trek: Discovery,” but we definitely learned that less is more when Paramount+ gave Georgiou her own spinoff movie in January. (You know how bad movies get released in January because they don’t need to worry about qualifying for Oscars? This kind of felt like that.)

The story, which found Georgiou joining a ragtag gang of secret agents chasing a doomsday weapon, didn’t make a lot of sense, rushing along at a frenetic pace so we didn’t notice the gaping plot holes; it felt more like a generic action movie than anything resembling “Star Trek.” The dialogue was stilted and overly quippy, and even an Oscar winner like Yeoh couldn’t bring any gravitas to the characters. It played like a rejected pilot for a TV show… which, in fact, was exactly what it was. Yep, we can see pretty clearly why “Section 31’s” mission got cut short. — D.N.

We don’t relish putting Meghan Markle’s Netflix lifestyle series on this list; there’s no shortage of vitriol out there for the Duchess of Sussex already, and hey, we wanted to like it! Who doesn’t love a dreamy, calming homemaking series that’s ultimately about nothing? But you have to really, really love tablescapes to sit through all 16 episodes of “With Love, Meghan,” in which Markle hosts friends at a beautiful home that isn’t hers and utters a lot of wistful word salads about flower arrangements and lemon zest. After weathering so many public storms since her marriage to Prince Harry, Markle had an opportunity here to really let us in and show us a slice of the life she’s created since stepping back from the royal family. Instead, “With Love, Meghan” felt insubstantial and pointless; the food looks gorgeous, but this is a dinner party invitation we’ll have to decline. — R.L.

Wow, Robert De Niro and Angela Bassett starring in a Netflix series… it can’t miss, right? Well, it can miss, as it turns out, and quite badly. A convoluted and ultimately hollow affair, “Zero Day” aimed to be a timely conspiracy thriller in the vein of “Homeland” and “House of Cards,” but it fell well short of the mark, getting bogged down in endless exposition and derailed by some truly bonkers plot twists.

With just six episodes to tell its story, “Zero Day” (set in the aftermath of a devastating cyber attack) piled on way too many characters and storylines for us to comprehend, rushing past any attempt to build emotional depth in favor of tossing capital-T twists at us like clockwork. The all-star cast tried its best, but even luminaries like De Niro and Bassett couldn’t make the clunky dialogue work. It’s a nice reminder, actually: Just because something looks like prestige TV doesn’t mean it’s any good. — D.N.