11 Terrible Shows With Great Ratings

This sitcom — starring Tony Danza as a live-in housekeeper and Judith Light as the advertising exec who hires him — overcame negative reviews to become a ratings hit, spending six seasons in broadcast TV’s Top 20 and one at No. 6. The Los Angeles Times called the show “as conventional as it is unfunny” in its initial review, while The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it “dead in the water.”

This sitcom about parents raising eight kids only gets an average of 6.6 stars out of 10 on IMDb but got a rating of 24.8 — meaning nearly a quarter of TV-owning households were tuned in — for the 1978–1979 season. And user Johnny_West has had enough: “Every episode was the same. … A problem arose that affected someone in the family or someone they knew. They all had to talk to each other about it and react and interfere. … Very neat formula of blissful happiness, over and over again.”

Some critics found CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s Sunshine State-set spinoff, led by David Caruso, a pale imitator of its predecessor, even though it reached a sunny No. 5 on broadcast TV. “While everything on the original CSI works — the concept, the actors, the script, the direction, the characters — nothing (did I mention nothing?) works on CSI: Miami,” declared the New York Post.

A sitcom centered on the romance between two Overeaters Anonymous attendees (played by Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy) drew in more than 11 million viewers in its first two seasons but didn’t go over so well with IMDb users, who gave it an average rating of 6.5. Users on the site said the humor is “predictable and bland” and “contrived and never funny,” with jokes “focused on humiliation, awkwardness, and passive aggression.”

Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada starred as California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers in this crime drama that once had a 21.5 rating, but critics weren’t revved up. The New York Times said the show was “somewhere between a sanitized Starsky & Hutch and a Police Story concocted for adolescents,” and the Chicago Tribune said “the dramatic value of CHiPs is invisible.”

“This is a potentially clever idea completely wasted: young, wild hippie chick [Jenna Elfman] marries nice, staid, young, Republican lawyer [Thomas Gibson],” user aemmering said of this sitcom, which scored nearly 14 million viewers on TV but only a 6.4/10 average on IMDb. “It’s all a terrible shame, for all its faults, it’s still a watchable show. The acting … is more than good, the ideas are interesting, if not terribly original. If it weren’t for that ghastly writing…”

IMDb users pointed out some of the oft-cited points of contention about this renovation show, the success of which spawned multiple revivals and international editions. “They did make a difference [for] needy families but never disclosed the taxes and mortgages that came with all the perks,” said malibuangel-04174. And keeponwithbrian wrote, “Instead of giving each member of the family [luxury items], why not help more people afford food, clothes, education, and medical insurance?”

“Falcon Crest is totally unworthy of its instant success,” The Baltimore Sun said of this primetime soap, which starred Jane Wyman as the matriarch of a winemaking family and ended up a No. 7 series. The Austin American-Statesman, meanwhile, declared there “ought to be a law against dressing up good actors in an expensive production and giving them absolutely nothing to say.”

Critics didn’t consider this Chuck Norris vehicle a knockout punch — and several found it problematic. The Baltimore Sun called out the show’s violence, vigilantism, and racial stereotypes, saying the show “would have been retrograde in 1972.” And the Sun Sentinel decided that “the worst violence of all” in the show “might be against the Constitution.” The show did, however, land a 12.3 rating.

Negative reviews didn’t stop this reality competition from waltzing to ratings victories in its early years, when it was second only to Idol. “Everything looks tacky: the set, the costumes, the lighting, the script … and above all the dancing,” said The New York Times. “While mildly amusing, what the show lacks is charm. And humor. And tension,” the New York Post added.

This reality competition, meanwhile, was once the top-rated show on broadcast TV but has hit all the wrong notes for users on IMDb, where the average rating is 4.3 stars out of 10. “Once the competition itself begins, there’s nothing that makes it intriguing, funny, or suspenseful,” said fearfulofspiders. And dokter_hew wrote, “It is nothing more than an overhyped, overblown televised karaoke contest, and people watch this crap in droves.”