5 Awful TV Shows With 0% Rotten Tomatoes Scores

Rotten Tomatoes and its Fresh/Rotten binary is all Roger Ebert's fault. The esteemed critic helped legitimize reductive rating systems with his thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach to reviews, and today a green splat can be the difference between whether audiences give a film a chance or dismiss it outright. But as with anything creative, films and TV shows are too complex and nuanced to be summed up by such simplistic paradigms. Except when they're not.

There are times when the dreaded green splat comes in handy as a shameful mark borne by the most abject cultural products the film and TV industry has ever pumped into our media ecosystem. As far as awful films are concerned, John Travolta has things locked down with seven 0%-rated films on Rotten Tomatoes. But what about TV? Well, there's yet to emerge a small screen rival to Travolta's calamitous RT rap sheet. But there are plenty of absolutely rotten shows that couldn't nudge the Tomatometer anywhere beyond 0%, and we've dived deep into this pool of TV effluent in search of only most putrid examples.

For whatever reason, many of the worst TV shows ever made also happen to be some of the worst sitcoms of all time. It's just the way it is. But we've tried to spread things out so there's an unhealthy array of absolute rubbish below, from misguided sitcoms to cretinous crime dramas and even a failed attempt at giving a classic comedy movie the small-screen treatment. It's all here, and it's all terrible.

There have been some incredible fantasy TV shows but "South of Hell" isn't one of them. This misstep was a We tv series that lasted about five minutes before it was sent straight to the underworld. Mena Suvari stars as Maria Abascal, a demon hunter who also happens to have a demon inside of her. The demon has a name too. What might it be? Moloch, Eater of Souls? Belphegor, Prince of Hell? No, it's Abigail. When Maria isn't exorcising the possessed people of Charleston, South Carolina, she's battling the evil force residing within. The only problem is, Abigail feeds on the exorcised evil from others, putting Maria in quite the pickle.

With established horror maestros like Jason Blum and Eli Roth executive producing, and Ti West and TV veteran Rachel Talalay directing, "South of Hell" should have been a decent supernatural drama. In practice, it was, according to most critics, more like an eternity of torture at the hands of Beelzebub himself. 

Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter didn't waste any time exorcising his demons. "It isn't scary," he wrote. "It looks comically cheap at times. The performances range from inconsistent to fairly awful. And unless the Emmys open up a category for Outstanding Use of Multi-Colored Contact Lenses, it's unlikely to get any real respect." Yikes. Emily L. Stephens of the AV Club was just as offended, writing, "After one episode, 'South Of Hell' already feels like an everlasting slog."

In fairness, Rotten Tomatoes has only collected five reviews, and just three are from "top critics." Still, a zero is a zero. After having seven of its eight episodes dumped on We tv on the same day, "South of Hell" was banished to eternal hellfire along with the rest of these irredeemable TV sinners.

Rob Schneider is Rob Schneider in "Real Rob." You can practically hear the sound of every single Netflix user briskly swiping past this one on the interface. Yet, "Real Rob" inexplicably stuck around for two seasons on the streamer, amassing an impressive mound of wretched reviews in the process.

The show did indeed see the former "Saturday Night Live" star play himself alongside his real-life wife Patricia Schneider and daughter Miranda Schneider. The show followed Rob through personal and professional challenges, cutting back and forth between clips of his standup comedy routine in what was seemingly an attempt to ape the success of one of the greatest sitcoms ever made. Unfortunately, it fell somewhat short of that mark. In fact, "Real Rob" never got off the starting line according to Rotten Tomatoes, where the Tomatometer sits at an abject 0%.

It's not really hard to see why. Just watch any episode of "Real Rob" and you'll find "jokes" like this: "Claustrophobia. The gayest of all phobias." This moment isn't supposed to make Rob look like a regressive dolt, it's supposed to be funny because "gay." Unsurprisingly, critics took this thing to task for, well being bad. Bethonie Butler of the Washington Post, for example, noted how the series had elements of "Louie" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" but that "the only thing that sets it apart from its predecessors is that it's not very good."

Amazingly enough, "Real Rob" was renewed for a second season, but unlike the many shows that underwent ridiculous overhauls in an attempt to boost ratings, when "Real Rob" returned it was exactly as bad as it had been before.

The 1989 film "Uncle Buck" is a classic and arguably the best John Candy film . Then there's "Uncle Buck" the TV show, which was horrible. The series was a continuation of the story told in the movie and aired on CBS from September 1990 to March 1991. Yes, it's another one-season-and-done blunder.

The first thing that should have prompted the network to reconsider their decision to green-light the show was the fact that John Candy — literally the man around which the entire 1989 movie was built — was unavailable. Instead, standup comedian Kevin Meaney was drafted in to play Buck Russell. The second red flag? Well, remember how in the movie Bob and Cindy Russell (Garrett M. Brown and Elaine Bromka) asked Candy's gambling addict slacker to watch their kids while they went out of town? Well, in this show they die. Yep, they straight up die in a car accident, which means old Uncle Buck is called in to care for their bereaved children Tia (Dah-ve Chodan), Miles (Jacob Gelman), and Maizy (Sarah Martineck), none of whom seem all that bothered their parents died a painful death. This was a comedy.

Written by Tim O'Donnell of "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Growing Pains" fame, "Uncle Buck" debuted in 1990 to awful reviews. "'Uncle Buck' is not funny at all," wrote the Los Angeles Times' Howard Rosenberg. "It's less a comedy than a slobedy, a gross sitcom version of the John Candy movie." David Bianculli of the Philadelphia Inquirer blasphemed when he wrote "This sitcom manages to take a bad movie and make it even worse." At least he got the last part right. Unsurprisingly, then, Uncle Buck sits at a flat zero on Rotten Tomatoes.

Remember that not so distant trend of self-help books using cuss words in their title? "Go the F*ck to Sleep," "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck?" Well that was definitely cool and interesting and "$h*! My Dad Says" was the TV equivalent.

This show started life as a Twitter feed (yes, they made a show out of a Twitter feed) where writer Justin Halpern literally posted quotes from his father. It proved popular, leading to a book and eventually a CBS sitcom. The book became a New York Times Bestseller. The show has a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

"$h*! My Dad Says" starred William Shatner as 72-year-old Dr. Edison Milford "Ed" Goodson III, who wasn't exactly afraid of sharing his politically incorrect views (sounds awful already doesn't it?) When his adult son Henry (Jonathan Sadowski) falls on hard times he's forced to move back in with his father. Hilarity ensues. Or rather, "a swamp of sitcom hackery" ensues, to use Verne Gay of Newsday's phraseology.

Shatner starred in one of the worst adaptations of the '90s, and was no stranger to flops. But "$h*! My Dad Says" was one of his lowest moments and critics didn't let him, or anyone involved, off lightly. "A dismal show," proclaimed Kris King of Slant Magazine. "So predictably brash," declared Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe. At least James Poniewozik of TIME Magazine was kind. Wait, sorry he was really mean, too. "Sometimes, a bad-sounding sitcom," he wrote, "is actually just a bad sitcom."

If you grew up in the 1970s, you know "Charlie's Angels" from the original hit TV series. If you grew up in the '90s and early 2000s you probably remember when Hollywood tried to resurrect the IP with two movies. And if you grew up in the 2010s you might recall Elizabeth Banks' empty but endearingly fun female empowerment version of "Charlie's Angels." But what nobody anywhere remembers is the 2011 TV series, which came courtesy of "Smallville" creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar.

The show was a remake of the 1976 series and starred Annie Ilonzeh as ex-police officer Kate Prince, Minka Kelly as street racer Eve French, and Rachael Taylor as former thief Abby Sampson. The action was moved from Los Angeles to Miami, where the titular trio investigated everything from the disappearance of a model to a child slavery ring. Yes, the campy, often outlandish '70s series had been reinvented as a more grounded and gritty affair. Why? Who knows, but "Charlie's Angels" lasted just four episodes before ABC clipped the Angels' wings.

Unsurprisingly, the reviews weren't very good. "I never thought my eyes could hurt this much," wrote Tim Walker of the Independent. Robert Bianco of USA Today was a tad more insightful, pointing to the show's inherent contradictions. "If realism is what you want from a pulp fantasy like 'Charlie's Angels,'" he wrote, "how is the show supposed to achieve it with a cast that can't even appear wet convincingly?" How indeed? Well, it didn't achieve anything beyond cancellation and a fat zero on Rotten Tomatoes.