Over 800,000 television shows have been created in the United States since people first gathered around their TVs for an evening of entertainment. With streaming now taking the lead in the industry, that figure seems to be growing rapidly. However, the sheer volume of content presents a problem; although there are some outstanding series, many are completely unwatchable.

For each “Breaking Bad,” “The Office,” or “Game of Thrones,” there’s a multitude of projects that don’t achieve any level of success. Whether due to poor writing, subpar acting, or the premise simply being terrible, there are numerous television shows that are just bad.

Determining which of these is the worst is subjective, but only to a certain extent. The issue becomes more objective when considering how long a series lasts before a network ultimately cancels it. While cancellation doesn’t always indicate a show is bad, this, along with audience and critics’ ratings on sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, suggests that the series in question just doesn’t resonate. Out of the nearly million series ever produced, these 15 likely rank as the worst TV shows of all time.

“One of the Boys” features a ton of talent but failed regardless. Some of the people involved include Mickey Rooney, Dana Carvey, Nathan Lane, and Meg Ryan, so on paper, the series had a lot going for it. The format is basic but servicable enough, centering around a grandfather (Rooney) who moves in with his grandson (Carvey) and his roommate (Lane), and wacky adventures ensue.

The series seemingly predated Carvey and Lane’s realization that they could be funny, resulting in a sedate show devoid of laughs — which isn’t good for a sitcom. To be clear, it’s not that the show lacked a laugh track — it just played regardless of whether the jokes landed. Alas, most of the time, the show simply isn’t funny.

Rooney’s performance is reminiscent of his work in his later years, but there’s little else to help make it a watchable program. The series only lasted 13 episodes before NBC pulled the plug. It’s mostly brought up these days to marvel at how utterly the series failed despite the cast’s talent. Carvey himself has since decried it as “some of the worst TV you’ve ever seen.”

On the long list of terrible TV shows that should never be rebooted rests an infamous series called “Manimal.” It was a superhero show centered around Dr. Jonathan Chase (Simon MacCorkindale), an aristocrat with a dark past who has mastered the secrets that divide humans from animals and vice versa. He partners with a police detective and Vietnam War veteran to fight crime. That premise isn’t terrible, but add into the mix the fact that the good doctor can shapeshift into any animal he wants, and too much silliness enters the conversation.

There are many problems with “Manimal,” but Dr. Chase’s transformations are some of the biggest. Typically, he wears a three-piece suit, which is destroyed when he transforms. Not only does it leave no shreds on the ground, but when he retakes his human form, he’s fully clothed. There were also discrepancies about his abilities, and, despite featuring VFX work by the legendary Stan Winston, nothing could save “Manimal” from cancellation. It didn’t take long for NBC to give it the axe, lasting only eight episodes.

In 2011, “$h*! My Dad Says” premiered on CBS and lasted just one season. The show is based on an X feed by author Justin Halpern, where he posted quotes from his father, Sam, who spewed out unsolicited, politically incorrect, and often funny tirades about contentious topics. Some folks at CBS certainly thought he was hilarious, because they gave Halpern the green light for a series that was sold largely on William Shatner’s involvement. He played Ed, who is modeled after Sam, and is as offensive as possible in the role. “$h*! My Dad Says” resides solidly in the realm of overhyped TV shows that ended up being terrible because the series had little to keep it going.

This is a network television show based on an X feed about a man who spews vile content on the daily. It’s somewhat funny at first but quickly becomes old. By quickly, we mean it’s tiring after just a few minutes of the pilot. Still, “$h*! My Dad Says” completed its first season of 18 episodes, but despite solid ratings, it was canceled before landing a second season.

Spider-Man was an incredibly successful comic book character upon his debut, and Marvel Comics wasted little time marketing off that success. This included two concurrent live-action television series in the ’70s, one in Japan and the other in the U.S. The Japanese “Supaidāman” is incredibly campy and fun but bears little resemblance to the comics.

Unfortunately, folks in the U.S. missed the Japanese take and instead had to watch “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Starring Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker, the CBS series is much closer to the comic book character it’s based upon, which is good — but it’s also incredibly cheesy, poorly executed, and the special effects looked dated even in 1977, which is when the TV film premiered before Season 1 dropped in ’78.

Initially, the ratings were solid, but the network fumbled the show and interfered with the creative direction of the second season. They nerfed many of Spidey’s powers to make him more relatable and ruined the show in the process. Making things even worse, the network released the second season’s seven episodes sporadically before canceling the whole thing in 1979 after only 13 episodes.

Sitcoms often throw unalike people together for laughs, and that’s essentially the premise of “Dads,” starring Seth Green, Giovanni Ribisi, Peter Riegert, and Martin Mull. The premise is that Eli (Green) and Warner (Ribisi) are video game designers and roomates. Their fathers, David (Riegert) and Crawford (Mull), come to live with them, resulting in a sort of “Odd Couple” situation.

Eli’s father, David, abandoned his family, while Warner’s dad, Crawford, is a failed businessman attempting to reignite his career. “Dads” features typical sitcom tropes of generating laughs by creating situations that make some of the characters uncomfortable. Instead, the audience was uncomfortable with the poorly written jokes and a tired plot that leans into racism and political incorrectness to try and score some guffaws.

“Dads” was overwhelmingly disliked by critics, holding a shameful 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics’ consensus calls the series “a near-total disaster” with unlikable characters and racist gags. TV By The Numbers predicted its cancellation and was soon proven right. The show pulled in mediocre ratings before Fox killed it after only 19 episodes.

Before they began dropping on Disney+ with wanton abandon, most of Marvel’s series either ran on Netflix or ABC. The latter network is responsible for Marvel’s “Inhumans,” which was a massive flop. When the show was produced, Disney had yet to acquire Fox’s licensed Marvel characters, which included the X-Men. Since Fox didn’t own the Inhumans rights, that team was tapped for a TV adaptation. The series launched via a highly publicized theatrical premiere in IMAX theaters. However, the show is rife with cosplay-esque costumes, bad scripts, and cartoonishly awful CGI, so the debut fell flat.

“Inhumans” was initially meant to run for several seasons, each of which would move the characters and overarching storyline forward, similar to ABC’s “Agents of SHIELD.” Of course, this didn’t happen, and “Inhumans” became the first failed Marvel series in the 21st century. The visual effects look incredibly cheap, especially for a Marvel production that held a theatrical screening of its premiere episode. That move backfired, and the show’s major marketing campaign blew up in the network’s face. The series was quickly canceled, airing only eight episodes.

“Tootsie” and “Bosom Buddies” proved that a project about a man pretending to be a woman could work, but they came long after “The Ugliest Girl in Town” darkened American televisions in the late 1960s. In this show, Peter Kastner plays Timothy Blair, a Hollywood talent agent who falls for a British actress and follows her to England after landing a modeling gig. This comes about because an English modeling agent believed Timothy was a woman after seeing him dressed as a hippie. In London, he goes by the name Timmie, which works for a bit. It eventually comes back to bite him, however, as he must remain in his Timmie guise longer than he’d planned, becoming Britain’s newest and most questionable model.

The ABC series lasted one 20-episode season, though three of them never aired. The series failed miserably, earning widespread condemnation from critics, including Richard F. Shepard of the New York Times, who described it as “the most vapid half-hour in the nation last night.” (via Television Obscurities)

Occasionally, a ridiculous premise can work for a TV show. “ALF”, which is about a diminutive, furry, cat-eating alien who lives with a suburban family, is a good example of this. But one show with a ludicrous concept that didn’t work is “My Mother the Car.” The title gives away the plot because it is, quite simply, about a man whose mother is his car.

David Crabtree (Jerry Van Dyke) buys a 1928 Porter touring car. Before long, he realizes that his mother, Gladys (Ann Sothern), has been reincarnated as said car and can speak to him through the vehicle’s radio and by flashing the lights. They don’t go about solving crimes like “Knight Rider” but are instead pursued by an unscrupulous collector intent on acquiring Gladys.

“Ridiculous” barely begins to describe the show, but to be fair, Van Dyke does a good job with what he’s given. It doesn’t amount to much, though; it’s campy and about as silly as a TV show can be, so it’s unsurprising that it only ran on NBC for a single 30-episode season before calling it quits.

If you ever believed that police procedural shows like “NCIS” would be better with musical numbers, you might be one of the executives who thought “Cop Rock” was a good idea. Debuting on ABC in 1990, it managed to air 11 episodes before the network canceled it, saving the world from more singing police officers.

As the title implies, the series is a mashup of a police procedural drama and a Broadway musical, incorporating song and dance numbers into the narrative. The show was about the Los Angeles Police Department and featured an ensemble cast of officers working to solve crimes — while breaking into massive, impressively choreographed song and dance numbers.

There’s more to the premise, but it’s difficult to get past the musical element. This was an experiment that simply didn’t work, and “Cop Rock” was a major swing and a miss for the network. An ambitious attempt to reimagine the popular police procedural format ended up becoming an expensive nightmare that proved the two genres mix like oil and water.

It’s risky to base a comedy on a serious real-world event, but “M*A*S*H” made a show about a mobile war hospital work, and “Hogan’s Heroes” was a sitcom set in a Nazi POW camp. Both were incredibly successful, but neither should have been an indication to anyone that a sitcom centered around one of history’s most brutal and tyrannical mass murderers was a good idea.

“Heil Honey, I’m Home!” is a short-lived British sitcom that aired a single episode before it was canceled. The premise is laughably bad, as it features Hitler (Neil McCaul) and Eva Braun (DeNica Fairman) living next door to a Jewish couple in Berlin. Neither Hitler nor Braun are portrayed much like the historical figures they’re based on, with the show presenting them as a standard sitcom couple rather than a bloodthirsty dictator and his wife.

This mishmash of clichés attempts to lampoon Hitler by copying some of the sillier Golden Age of Television elements of American sitcoms. It’s incredibly offensive and ridiculously inappropriate because of the real-world inspirations for its leads, whose counterparts were responsible for the brutal deaths of more than six million Jews. Quickly canceled, it should have never been made.

“The Idol” is an example of how a wonky production can result in an expensive mess. Canceled after five episodes, the show follows Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), a singer on the decline who hopes to reclaim her title as the sexiest pop star in the world. She launches this endeavor when her career stumbles following a nervous breakdown. Jocelyn is also in a relationship with Tedros (Abel Tesfaye), a man who leads a cult and has questionable motives, to say the least.

The series’ production underwent significant problems, including changing out directors midway through the shoot. The premise was altered into more sexualized fare, which didn’t work, and was incredibly costly, shooting past its initial budget to a whopping $75 million, or $15 million per episode. The series’ executive producer and creator, Sam Levinson, might have been trying to recreate his success with “Euphoria” in “The Idol,” but he failed miserably. Critics loathed the series, and it holds a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus calls it “every bit as florid and sleazy as the industry it seeks to satirize.”

“Supertrain” is about a nuclear-powered train loaded with amenities for vacationing travelers. “Supertrain” wasn’t cheap, making it one of the most expensive TV flops in history, a cost largely due to the expensive train built for its production.

While it was meant to be similar to “Love Boat,” instead of everything happening at sea, it’s on the rails. However, in practice, it’s closer to “Snowpiercer” territory — without all the infanticidal cannibalism and social inequities. Most of the series focuses on the passengers’ social lives and how they interact with each other. Also, like the far more successful “Love Boat,” “Supertrain” features guest stars in all of its episodes.

There aren’t many, though — the show only lasted for nine episodes before it was canceled. Part of the problem was that it focused too much on the train and its amenities rather than fleshing out meaningful stories for its characters. This quickly became boring, and, given the high cost of $7 million ($32 million in 2025) for the pilot alone, it’s surprising NBC didn’t cancel it sooner.

John Mulaney is a gifted comedy writer, voice actor, and stand-up comic, but he’s not the greatest actor in the world. This became apparent when he was given his eponymous series, “Mulaney,” in 2014.

Mulaney stars as himself, a stand-up comedian living in New York City, a premise almost identical to “Seinfeld” (which often poked fun at its titular lead for being funny but lacking the ability to act). The episodes use his stand-up routine to set up jokes within the show, and he’s close to some unusual characters played by Elliott Gould, Zack Pearlman, and Martin Short. So, yeah – it’s “Seinfeld,” but starring another comic and achieving none of the success.

It wouldn’t be hyperbole to call “Mulaney” one of the worst sitcoms ever made; in fact, that seems almost too kind of a description. The program was panned by critics, with few people being convinced that Mulaney was better at being Seinfeld than Seinfeld. It remained on the air for 13 episodes before Fox killed production and holds a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It can be risky to center a series around an animal, which is why you don’t see it too often on television. Ross (David Schwimmer) had a monkey for a short stretch on “Friends,” which, though weird, worked as a background story. Years earlier, however, the antics of a chimpanzee named Buttons weren’t enough to keep “Me and the Chimp” on American airwaves.

The series is all about a dentist named Mike Reynolds (Ted Bessell), his wife, their two kids, and the aforementioned chimp. Most of the episodes revolve around Buttons doing something that mucks up the family’s plans in humorous and often calamitous ways. Garry Marshall and Thomas L. Miller of “Happy Days” fame co-created the series, but it failed to find a level of success comparable to their previous hits. CBS canceled “Me and the Chimp” after 13 episodes, which isn’t surprising as the series was based on little more than a weak gimmick. Most of the plots were predictable, and the humor didn’t really work — but Buttons managed to give killer performances, making him one of the best actors in the show.

In the 1990s, Fox was desperate to launch a successful late-night talk show, so the network signed Chevy Chase to take on the gig. A ton of money was spent preparing for the series, which premiered in 1993. After just six weeks, Fox pulled the plug on what is inarguably the worst talk show to ever light up a television screen. “The Chevy Chase Show” featured tired gags, an audience that rarely followed guidance, and a host who was out of his element. The comedic actor appears nervous from the start of the first episode and never finds his way to solid ground.

Chase spoke with Time about the series’ failure in 2007, saying that it wasn’t what he’d hoped it would be from the onset. “The talk show that I went to Fox with was an entirely different concept,” he said. “I would never do it again. What I wanted had a whole different feel … Much darker and more improv. But we never got there.” The following year, he parodied the talk show in a Super Bowl XXVIII commercial for Doritos that gets canceled midway through the spot.