For every critical darling that dominates awards season, there are TV shows that fall spectacularly flat - sometimes so badly that not a single critic can find something nice to say.
Rotten Tomatoes has become the go-to scorecard for tracking critical consensus, and its Tomatometer ratings can be brutally unforgiving. Below, we're counting down 10 of the worst-reviewed TV series of all time, based on their shockingly low Tomatometer and audience "Popcorn" scores.
From misfiring sitcoms to disastrous reboots, these are the series that left critics and viewers alike shaking their heads.
Released in 2017, the series attempted to bring Marvel's royal family of superhumans to television. Instead, it became a cautionary tale. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a brutal 11% rating, with critics slamming its "unimaginative narrative, dull design work, weak characters, and disengaging soapy melodrama."
Shot partly for IMAX release, Inhumans was intended as a major event. Instead, it flopped with both critics and audiences, who gave it only 42% on the Popcorn meter. It was quietly cancelled after a single eight-episode run.
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Netflix has produced its fair share of acclaimed dramas, but The I-Land stands out for all the wrong reasons. Billed as a mysterious, high-concept survival thriller, the series follows a group of strangers who wake up on a tropical island with no memory of how they got there. The premise sounded like Lost. The execution, critics said, was closer to unintentional parody. Rotten Tomatoes assigned it a shocking 8% score, with the site's consensus calling it "bafflingly bad - the only mystery is how The I-Land got made in the first place."
Reviewers criticised its stilted dialogue, nonsensical twists, and underdeveloped characters. It dropped on Netflix in September 2019 and was swiftly buried under negative buzz.
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It ran for one short season before being cancelled in 2013, joining the long list of network sitcoms that never found their footing.
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Despite a cast including Tony Shalhoub and Kal Penn, the series was accused of being out of touch and lacking in charm, earning its place among the lowest-rated network comedies of the decade.
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While it attracted some curious viewers at launch, the backlash was swift. It was cancelled after one season, remembered mostly for its critical drubbing rather than its content.
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