Note: I do this countdown of the worst every year, and almost always do individual characters more than overall series, but this year I felt the problem was more systemic to the entire series. This list could almost double as “the most disappointing TV shows” of the year. As always, the 10th spot is not nearly as odious as the 1 spot, meaning we get worse as we keep going…
Runner Up: Strangest sympathies goes to “A Very Royal Scandal”…This isn’t a “bad” show at all, and the characterization of Prince Andrew (wonderfully played by Michael Sheen) is actually very good; but that’s sort-of the problem. Watching the third episode of the series, you would think Ruth Wilson’s journalist was actually in the wrong to give a tough interview towards a member of the royal family who the rest of the public is convinced is guilty. Although “Scandal” is better than “Scoop” (a movie on the same topic), I can’t help but feel a miniseries that tut-tuts at journalists doing what they’re supposed to be doing is tonally off in 2024, a year where good journalism towards very powerful men has never seemed more endangered.
10. Most confused metaphor: Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) in “The Regime”…Herbert is supposed to be a stand-in for “the people,” the unwashed masses that Hugh Grant’s deposed socialist can’t seem to win over, and Kate Winslet’s autocratic snob has a seductive trance over. And that’s not a bad idea for a series to explore at all, but “Regime” has a cranked-up, somewhat-braindead tone that makes it unclear if Herbert is a “Raging Bull”-esque bruiser that’s actually driving the savagery of Winslet or a naive dupe conned by her or maybe both at once? I understand the series was trying to explore the confusing relationship between angry mobs and their demagogue rulers (is Trump leading the January 6th mob or merely giving them an outlet for their darkest desires?), but I wouldn’t call that a satisfying approach. [Still, “Regime” is more worthy of a watch to see what you think than the rest of this list…]
9. Biggest downgrade of a previously excellent character: Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in “House of the Dragon”…Although Daemon was a season 1 standout, I doubt anyone would classify his arc in season 2 as anything but a disappointment. “Slow,” “meandering,” “repetitive,” and “is this going anywhere?” aren’t things people would’ve said about the previously-electric Daemon’s actions in season 1, so watching “Dragon”‘s loosest cannon endlessly moping around a huge castle is the textbook example of trying to “fix” something that ain’t broke.
8. Best representation of why a series doesn’t fully click: Brian (Bashir Salahuddin) in “How to Die Alone”…Although black/white couples were actually portrayed a little bit better than usual in 2024 TV shows (which you’ll see represented in the “Best” characters list…sadly, movies can’t say the same), this series was a glaring exception by not only having Brian cheat on his white wife with exclusively black women, but literally mentioning the reason he’s doing it is because he wants to have sex with someone “that looks like” him in the fifth episode “Trust No One.” Yuk! This obvious display of narcissism doesn’t even merit a raised eyebrow from main character Mel (Natasha Rothwell), who nods along as though her brother has said something perfectly reasonable.
“How to Die Alone” is a show I was primed to like since a character changing their hum-drum life is one of the hardest things for a series to realistically explore, but Mel doesn’t really seem that open to change throughout most of the series, only taking the smallest of baby steps towards change when opportunities fall into her lap, and even then seeming ambivalent. By embracing such a status quo attitude as Brian saying he finds conformity (moaning that he’s not experiencing “black love” and putting down his wife as a stereotypical white woman that “reads Brene Brown” as though he barely sees her as a fully formed person) crazy sexy, the series is inadvertently revealing why the season one journey doesn’t really move as it should: Mel isn’t really the avatar of openness that she should be, and the series is barely even aware of that.
7. Most unwelcome new addition: Holly (Patricia Heaton) in “Frasier”…Season one’s reboot of “Frasier” didn’t work because it often felt like our title character was carrying the entire series without the rest of the cast gelling much around him (politics be damned, it must be said that Kelsey Grammer hasn’t lost a step and may now be Hollywood’s most talented conservative). That’s not true in season 2 (Toks Olagundoye’s Olivia is especially good, and the natural romantic partner for Frasier, which the series will probably never admit since Frasier has literally never dated a black woman), where even the weakest link of Jack Scott’s Freddy improves a bit.
So why force Heaton’s Holly on us? This is clearly yet another woman Frasier has nothing in common with as his love interest, and we’ve already seen that play out time and time again. A character who is nearly seventy years old reliving the same mistakes he did in Seattle more than 20 years ago is more depressing than funny–even if Grammer clearly wanted to help out a fellow Hollywood conservative with a recurring guest part, and one that will probably stretch into season 3…sigh…
6. Most unnecessary spouses: Paul Pullman (Sule Rimi) and Nuria (Ursula Cordero) in “The Day of the Jackal”…The 1973 thriller “The Day of the Jackal” is one of the best action movies ever made, and one thing it did not have were unnecessary spouses for “The Jackal” or the coppers chasing him before he can kill his target. Sadly, the TV version can’t say the same–even if it has very good action sequences, and solid performances from the always-terrific LaShana Lynch and Eddie Redmayne, in possibly his least affected and annoying performance.
However, time stands still every time either The Jackal or the MI6 agent chasing him have to deal with their irritating spouses. A better season would’ve been 8 episodes instead of the padded-10 that we get here, and deep-sixed the spousal subplots entirely.
5. Cast most desperately in need of a reboot: “Shark Tank”…This is the only “non scripted” series on the list this year, although I question how genuine it truly feels these days with its best shark eyeing the exit (Mark Cuban will be departing at the end of the current season). And when Cuban’s gone? You’ll have Robert Herjavic (best known for breaking more than half the deals he makes in the “Tank”), Daymond John (literally being sued by some of his invested companies and who loooong ago seemed to lose interest in making deals), Barbara Corcoran (probably the second best shark, but whose passion for deals may be long gone as well), Lori Greiner (still reluctant to stray from her wheelhouse of cheap plastic crap you can sell on QVC, despite repeatedly saying “I’m all for the environment” and then never making a deal for anything green), and Kevin O’Leary–nobody’s first choice for a deal, and who often makes “no confidence” royalty deals that are worse than if the entrepreneur didn’t receive a deal at all.
Once Cuban leaves, so should the rest of the sharks–whether they want to or not–and a completely new cast be brought in for subsequence seasons. After all, American entrepreneurship has never been harder than with the modern oligopoly that has consumed most industries, and it’d be nice to see sharks that understand that a bit better than the ones we’ve watched for 16 seasons who “made it” decades ago.
4. Least supported supporting cast: “Mayor of Kingstown”…Although too-many current TV shows have an issue with cutting even the most unnecessary supporting members of their cast (“The Boys” is an obvious example), Taylor Sheridan’s most ruthless show may be the only TV series that has too high a body count by practicing a “survival of the least fit” mentality of having characters we care about gunned down while ones that have overstayed their welcome continue on for years. Noble “civilians” like Dianne Wiest or Michael Beach, and assorted criminal lowlives have come and gone on “Kingstown,” and yet the series still doesn’t seem to think it’s going too far by killing sweet Rhonda (Nona Parker Johnson) or seductive Iris (Emma Laird), two of the main character’s love interests in a single season. “Kingstown” is such a relentlessly gray world of bleakness that it can feel more like a place you’re hoping to escape than a show you can have a real investment in–a perfect example being Iris’s unnecessary overdose death after she’d already gotten on a bus to leave “Kingstown.”
3. Most predictably disappointing crew: “Yellowstone”…The final six episodes of a show I once loved (season 3 made my list of “the ten best TV shows” of that year, and various characters or plot moments have made similar countdowns over the years) sputtered to a disappointingly predictable conclusion after two years with no episodes. The show hardly needed to come back at all to tell us Beth and Rip would kill Jaime, and the titular ranch would be returned to Native Americans in some capacity (although letting Tate inherit the ranch might’ve made more sense than losing most of the ranch–the entire thing the family was fighting the very lucrative land deal to avoid…huh?). Having characters do stupid things–like vehemently fighting a deal that would’ve netted the family nearly a billion dollars and only cost them a small portion of the ranch or having the only black character on the show get killed by the very horses he spent his life training in the last day of the ranch having horses like some cop getting killed “two days before retirement”–can make us wonder why we ever had investment in what they were doing.
2. Most pretentious bunch of characters: “Disclaimer”…In the beginning of Apple’s star-studded dud, I was excited that we were treated to such a cerebral-seeming series as main characters gave intricate voiceovers torn straight from a literary novel with “finely observed” prose. But the series soon becomes stagey and artificial–with some of the conversations between Cate Blanchett and Sacha Baron Cohen’s married leads in particular seeming more like bad theater than a high-quality TV show. [And, frankly, some of the showy iris-wipe transitions got a little old too.]
Worse, the series eventually has a bad “twist:” in this case, a rape that undercuts everything we’ve seen before it–once again using the cheapened trope of sexual assault as a catalyst for a female character’s narrative. The more interesting show we’d seen before then had Blanchett’s younger self engaging in understandable moral shades of gray, and set up a more nuanced (and more believable) conflict between her and Kevin Kline’s bitterly vengeance-obsessed antagonist. By making things so simple and the heroine’s actions beyond-question, this “erudite” series actually reveals itself to be no smarter than the crappiest of broadcast dramas.
1. Worst all-around cast of characters: “Eric”…The heaps of critical praise this show received left me dumbfounded, as what’s presented in actuality is some of the most unbelievable and/or unlikable characters I’ve seen in recent years. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Vincent Anderson’s actions are pretty baffling, but the show can sort-of disguise that behind the fact that Vincent is substance addicted and mentally unwell (unless seeing a giant blue monster with a gruff, commanding voice is the picture of sanity).
So what excuse remains for the rest of the cast? Various adults who know where the missing boy is, but do not return him to the authorities? Dan Fogler’s pedophilic puppet show co-creator? McKinley Belcher III’s less-than-capable lead detective? And Gaby Hoffman revealing that she’s having an affair that’s led to her being pregnant to Cumberpatch while their young son is still missing? Scene after scene feels even more stagey and artificial than “Disclaimer,” and I can almost see this being envisioned as a Broadway show that would close in 3 months instead of the miniseries it’s become. As is, there’s not even a supporting character for the audience to latch onto, and the central mystery of what happened to the boy barely seems important by the mid-point, leaving us narratively stranded as well.