tv What are the most Boring TV shows you've ever watched?

Over the years, I've watched TV. Not some tv, but rather all of it. I just like to know what's out there. In that process, I've unfortunately watched a number of boring and terrible shows. I thought it might be fun to have a thread where people nominate their worst shows of all time. I'm mostly leaving out reality tv shows, since basically all of them would qualify for this list.

In no particular order, here's a list of some of the shows that I thought were a complete waste of time. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, since I'm listing the most forgettable shows.

NCIS - who knew that the military was so prone to crime? Uninteresting people go on what seems like an infinite number of template adventures chasing down leads related to military misconduct. Yawn.

Stargate SG1 - Who knew that a 2 1/2 star movie needed 10 years of followup material starring Mcguyver. The series took us to hundreds of alien planets, every single one of which looked exactly like the forest located behind the film studio. Obviously all soldiers from the future wear used army surplus gear. There was an episode once where they hired a CG animator, that was a 2 parter.

Shameless - I grew up in a bad area, so the dim witted chronicles of dirt poor sociopaths was dull and grimy. Alcoholics are boring people, no matter how often they scream and punch each other.

CSI x - this goes for all the myriad CSI series. In what appeared to be a franchise written by people that thought crimes were solved via the donning of ray ban sunglasses, a crack team of c list actors investigated repetitive crimes using a single nonsensical technique - zooming into low grade security camera footage of blurry license plates, and then yelling "enhance that". At this point in each episode, the plate number would magically depixilate, revealing the identity of the perpetrator, at which point one of the c listers would exclaim "we got em". One of the numerous spinoffs starred Gary Sinise, apparently because David Caruso was too charming and relatable.

Dr Who - A childhood favorite of mine, in the days before my brain was completely formed, I discovered later in life that the entire show revolved around a guy stopping various large scale armies with a penlight, and witty remarks. Some episodes by certain writers were good, but by and large, the show's insistence on repeatedly having the doctor bring literal armies to a halt by explaining to them that they probably didn't want to invade anyway seemed more than a bit contrived.

Arrow - Another show that had to bend every plotline to fit a contrived main theme, a guy with a bow and arrow takes on armies of armed gunmen with banana clips and attack helicopters. In the background, a seemingly unending soap opera rolled on for a decade.

Alias - It didn't start out as the worst show ever, but after a short while, the plots fell victim to increasingly contrived plotlines. By the end of it, it turned out that every member of the main star's extended family was in fact a key player in an international conspiracy. Skip to season 5 to see her cousin's uncle's sister by marrige manipulating the KGB into a shadow war with the CIA, run by her long lost brother or something. Apparently there were only about 15 people involved in geopolitics, each one blood related to the protagonist.

Mad About You - Paul Rieser and Helen Hunt spent years dominating filler time in daytime network content slots. Their tepid milquetoast adventures included politely complaining about things, and having minor difficulties living in the city.

Emmerdale - This show has been running for 50 years, and nothing has happened on it yet. I think one of the cousins got married to one of the neighbors once. I can't remember which was which.

Flash Gordon - This is why you don't make shows with no money, no known actors, and no talented writers. You just end up with a guy in a jacket walking to one location after another. It was a pretty good quality jacket, and it looked like there were several people in charge of keeping it clean. Otherwise it may have been a series of identical jackets, not sure.

Luther - While Idris Elba can be talented in some other franchises, Luther was a stupid show. A cost cutter clone of silence of the lambs, an independent police detective flirts with his psychopathic nemesis while solving average cases across a variety of backdrops, ranging from overcast days in great Briton, to rainy afternoons in London. I think the finale could have been improved if the sun came out in the last episode, so that at least one surprising thing could have happened in the entire series.

Ancient Aliens - Do you like science, but feel like everyone involved suffers from having a 80+ IQ? Ancient Aliens stepped up to deliver hundreds of episodes where the bottom 10% of your high school class answers life's greatest questions, utilizing a mixture of blurry bigfoot vhs tapes, and clumsy drawings of Mayan mythology. A great relief for people that found "Mcguyver" too intellectual, with it's functional 4th grade chemistry, and crude understanding of physics concepts such as displacement and leverage. One can only lament the untimely demise of the Bogdanoff brothers, since they would have unquestionably joined the cast at some point otherwise.

Keeping up with the Kardashians - A show that dared to ask the question, "what if we gave the stupidest people in America 2% of the GNP" The answer? About 15 years later they had designed some earrings or something. I think one of them used to run down the street really fast.

The Bold and the Beautiful - Soap operas are all the same, but this one seemed even more the same than usual. Extremely repetitive and dull, it featured people with eyepatches discussing interpersonal matters while drinking.

Literally everything on the CW network - Writing a teen drama series is like shooting fish in a barrel, and the results are equally uninteresting. Some were better than others of course, but in general, these shows are so formulaic that you can often guess an episode's entire plot within the first few minutes.

Anybody have a show that they think was a complete waste?
 
Here is a small list of tings I will not watch anymore of....

The Witcher: I Have seen the first season, the main protagonist has no goal and the story is confusing mes. Will not watch season 2

Vikings:
I Have seen the first season and everybody is a retarded lunatic. Will not watch season 2. If I want a good story about vikings I will watch the Vinland Saga. So much better....

See:
I have seen 3 episodes. I find nobody is interesting, not gonna watch this for Jason Momoa....

Black Mirror:
I have seen the first season. Al of the episodes make me feel empty and dead inside.... Will not watch season 2

The Boys.
I find nobody compelling or interesting. Watch't one episode....

Series I love
The Queen's Gambit, Midnight Mass and I love the new Arcane.
 
I'd have to add the movie "Ad Astra" here, which was able to reach new levels of dullness, previously considered unattainable. 2001 had an hour of silence, and still managed to be more riveting.

The reason you can't relate to the Witcher is because he is written as an empathetic and moral psychopath, obviously no such person exists, so he is pretty hard to relate to. It doesn't matter too much though, because the show itself is basically "Hercules the Legendary Journeys" with 10x the budget and a lot less sense of humor.

As far as Vikings... I'd say that's probably a pretty historically accurate picture of the psychology of the time, Can't say it's particularly entertaining. An evil villain that plans to wreck everything and a good guy with no brains often end up doing the same things, so it's hard to root for them. I'd say in modern times, none of us would actually like anyone from these ages and situations. I don't even like people from 100 years ago. Other shows write them as relatable and heroic, but I think Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" was probably a portrait of one of the better types of characters you would encounter in those days.

See: didn't like it, also passed

Black Mirror. It's a great show, it's just Charlie Booker exploring the dark side of sci fi horror a bit. Each episode is a different story, there were some great ones in season 4

The Boys, I thought the base concept was a stroke of genius, despite the show being very offensive to a lot of groups of people. I certainly wouldn't advise easily offended people to watch it. What it does brilliantly is to subvert tropes and break taboos to a degree that make it different than anything else on the air. Again, anyone reading this is super conservative or older, you should likely not watch "The Boys" as it is perhaps the darkest show on television. What it really does is explore what would happen if superheroes were real human beings with all their faults intact. After watching this, I'd say it's a good thing that there are no superheroes in the world, lol.

Loved the Queen's Gambit mini series, great show.
 
"Ad Astra" I liked the colors and grading..... the technical's but yea.... it has a very slow pace.

Vikings is pretty historically accurate.... but the story telling in this series is not. Ragnar is like preparing for a battle and Brother Athelstan is like......oooooh You are preparing for battle...... Ragnar is like.....no I'm not. Ragnar gets depressed and we need Earl Haraldson to attack his house for the story to progress.... there is no logic or cause and effect .....

Black Mirror is good..... its just all story's ending very badly....
 
I find most TV to be boring. Sitcom families seem to be stupid, clueless idiots; the characters are all overly exaggerated cliches. I'm sick of formulaic cop, fire & medical cookie-cutter dramas, and if I see another zombie or vampire I think I'll puke. Most sci-fi and fantasy shows start out okay, then rapidly start exploring the limits of absurdity. Other dramas just seem to be women bitching to each other about each other (my wife and daughter watch them).

Granted, I haven't had much time recently to go out and sample a lot of the new fare, but I can't understand the over-the-top reaction to "The Mandalorian." It was good, but not deserving of the fervor it received, IMHO.

The last shows I enjoyed were "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," "Bones" (I liked the characters, otherwise...), "Breaking Bad" and Blue Bloods (again, formulaic, but I liked the characters). I've tried about a dozen shows in the last half year or so and give up after a half dozen episodes or so.
 
I recommend to watch Arcane.... There is references to The Prince from Niccolò Machiavelli. Noting in it feels forced or shoehorned in there. From all of the 100 of characters from League of Legends we only get 8..... Everyone is motivated by some bigger goal or tries to protect something that is dear to him. I expected it to be OK... but not this good. It respects its audience. There is so much puzzle pieces you can bring together in the tings the characters say and what we can see. Gonna watch this series at least 2 more times. The world of StarWars feels Small in scale compared to this one city of Piltover.
 
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Here is a small list of tings I will not watch anymore of....

The Witcher: I Have seen the first season, the main protagonist has no goal and the story is confusing mes. Will not watch season 2

Vikings:
I Have seen the first season and everybody is a retarded lunatic. Will not watch season 2. If I want a good story about vikings I will watch the Vinland Saga. So much better....

See:
I have seen 3 episodes. I find nobody is interesting, not gonna watch this for Jason Momoa....

Black Mirror:
I have seen the first season. Al of the episodes make me feel empty and dead inside.... Will not watch season 2

The Boys.
I find nobody compelling or interesting. Watch't one episode....

Series I love
The Queen's Gambit, Midnight Mass and I love the new Arcane.

The Boys is one of those shows that keeps getting better every single episode. 3rd season is coming at some point, i def recommend giving it a longer shot. I wasn't that into the pilot either. Like they have this one character The Deep that sexually assaults the main heroine and he is detestable in the pilot. Why would you care to watch him? i get it

but its all a setup for the character to become a fucking comedy goldmine a bit later down the road.
he has some of my favorite scenes in the whole series. like when he was talking to that lobster at the grocery store. lmao.
 
Friends. I know it's supposed to be good, but I've never got through a single episode. I find it too thoughtless, too insensitive. What about people who don't have friends?

I feel, by the way, the same way about Sex and the City. What about...? Nevermind.
 
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Friends. I know it's supposed to be good, but I've never got through a single episode. I find it too thoughtless, too insensitive. What about people who don't have friends?

I feel, by the way, the same way about Sex and the City. What about...? Nevermind.
 
Catman & Rueben. It was a REALLY cheap Batman knockoff back in the 60's, produced by KHJ Channel 9 (Los Angeles). It was on early Tuesday evening, and rerun on Thursday evening, and I think it was on for a week and a half, and I swear it was shot in someone's garage in Sylmar.
Cop Rock. 1990 Steven Bochco LAPD cop drama, where the cast broke out in song and dance at the most dramatic point in the whole show. Think of "Glee" with 22" batons and handcuffs.
My Mother The Car. Although I watched it (hey, I was a kid...), this 1960's sitcom starred Jerry van Dyke as a henpecked son, and Ann Southern as his mother, reincarnated as a 1930 Flivvermobile.
Manimal. A rare Glen Larson turkey about guy who can change into any beast, I watched all of it's 8 episodes. My BIL was one of the producers, and I relished reminding him just what a HUGE pile of shit it was. He went back to 1st AD/UPM for another 20 years before he ever produced another show.
 
I rewatched the boys - surprised to find it wasn't nearly as engaging a second time around.
And the first 3 episodes of season one were all slow, thats a long time to get up and running
 
Catman & Rueben. It was a REALLY cheap Batman knockoff back in the 60's, produced by KHJ Channel 9 (Los Angeles). It was on early Tuesday evening, and rerun on Thursday evening, and I think it was on for a week and a half, and I swear it was shot in someone's garage in Sylmar.
Cop Rock. 1990 Steven Bochco LAPD cop drama, where the cast broke out in song and dance at the most dramatic point in the whole show. Think of "Glee" with 22" batons and handcuffs.
My Mother The Car. Although I watched it (hey, I was a kid...), this 1960's sitcom starred Jerry van Dyke as a henpecked son, and Ann Southern as his mother, reincarnated as a 1930 Flivvermobile.
Manimal. A rare Glen Larson turkey about guy who can change into any beast, I watched all of it's 8 episodes. My BIL was one of the producers, and I relished reminding him just what a HUGE pile of shit it was. He went back to 1st AD/UPM for another 20 years before he ever produced another show.
Despite a near encyclopedic knowledge of tv and film, you have managed to stump me with Catman and Rueben. I have never hear of it, but will be sure to look it up, and fill in that knowledge gap.

I've seen Cop Rock 3 times, I watch it whenever I need reassurance that my ideas for shows are "way better than stuff that already made it". Sometimes I'll switch over to Eli Stone.

My Mother the car had it's moments, but they were rare. I feel like this show was a cheap knock off of "Francis the talking Mule" which was far better, with the same base concept.

Manimal is just without redeeming quality. This show would have been a bad idea in todays era of high end sfx, but back then, it was even worse. You have this show where the main draw is watching a guy transform into various animals, but since they didn't even try to budget for that, every transformation is just the camera cutting away from Simon, and then the next shot is a horse inside a building or something. I think Tales of the gold monkey was a far better show, and that's not a compliment.

Here's the only remaining photo from the Catman and Rueben era, these two guys were a comedic duo, and I guess did the show as a one off.
1650480100310.png
 
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I rewatched the boys - surprised to find it wasn't nearly as engaging a second time around.
And the first 3 episodes of season one were all slow, thats a long time to get up and running
Same, not as good on the rewatch. Not saying it wasn't an interesting first time watch, it definitely was. I think that when shows base a lot of their dopamine feed on shock events and unexpected plot developments, they gain short term impact at the expense of rewatch value.

A show that balanced the two sides pretty well was OZ, which had brutal and shocking moments, but never let them overshadow the classic human drama that provided it with it's longevity.
 
Despite a near encyclopedic knowledge of tv and film, you have managed to stump me with Catman and Rueben. I have never hear of it, but will be sure to look it up, and fill in that knowledge gap.

I've seen Cop Rock 3 times, I watch it whenever I need reassurance that my ideas for shows are "way better than stuff that already made it". Sometimes I'll switch over to Eli Stone.

My Mother the car had it's moments, but they were rare. I feel like this show was a cheap knock off of "Francis the talking Mule" which was far better, with the same base concept.

Manimal is just without redeeming quality. This show would have been a bad idea in todays era of high end sfx, but back then, it was even worse. You have this show where the main draw is watching a guy transform into various animals, but since they didn't even try to budget for that, every transformation is just the camera cutting away from Simon, and then the next shot is a horse inside a building or something. I think Tales of the gold monkey was a far better show, and that's not a compliment.

Here's the only remaining photo from the Catman and Rueben era, these two guys were a comedic duo, and I guess did the show as a one off.
1650480100310.png
This is from a fairly new post (copyright 2022), I guess the show wasn't just on KHJ Los Angeles, but on the RKO network. Thankfully my memory didn't fail me, the show was as bad as I remember, even for an easily impressed 13 year old. This line from the Long Beach's Independent Press-Telegram review is better than any line from the show... "Catman ventures forth each night for one cataclysmic failure after another. His associate Reuben, before joining the Catman was a ward of the court in Montgomery, Ala, sort of a Montgomery ward."

 
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My Mother the car had it's moments, but they were rare. I feel like this show was a cheap knock off of "Francis the talking Mule" which was far better, with the same base concept.
i played poker once with Jerry Van Dyke (my brush with greatness, lol). I always found him to be an engaging actor, with a unique certain kind of comic presence, beginning with his bits on the Dick Van Dyke show, as Rob's brother. And I liked Coach too, because he was in It.
 
A horse is a horse of course of course. Mr. Ed. i think Francis was in the movies. I remember one where he was on a football team, as a kicker, of course :)
I would actually watch football if they allowed mules to play. I think we would see some amazing kickoffs.
 
From the era of My mother the car I remember a kind of golden age: The Munsters, the far superior Adams Family, and Batman, the full camp of which I fully got, even as a little kid.
 
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