The worst TV shows of 2024 have one thing in common: They’re all either spinoffs of previously established franchises, or later seasons in shows that used to be great—or some combination of the two. This should come as no surprise.
All too often, a series goes downhill over time. And when it comes to adaptations and spinoffs, the trend has not been great in recent years. Prequels are hard to get right, and more often than not they tend to fail. Big franchises like Marvel and Star Wars have also had a tough time when it comes to pleasing longtime fans. And while a lot of shows have had enormous amounts of money thrown at them, inexperienced showrunners and bad writing keeps dragging project after project down.
Before we get any further, I’d like to point out that many great shows also aired in 2024 and I’ll have a separate post going over all of my favorites. Like just about every year, 2024 was a mixed bag with both high and low points.
I can’t include all the worst TV shows of the year, since I didn’t watch some that I heard were terrible but couldn’t force myself to sit through. These include Halo’s second season—the first was so bad I gave up on it—and Taika Waititi’s Time Bandits remake, which I tried to watch but couldn’t stomach. The Terry Gilliam film is such a wonderfully dark, weird classic. The TV adaptation didn’t even have little people. I also couldn’t stomach the horrible Winter King adaptation, a show based on some of my favorite books that failed so miserably I had to walk away. I skipped the dreadful-looking Cruel Intentions.
Likewise, I never made it past a few episodes of the first season of Velma and had no intention of wasting my time on Season 2, which I hear was just as terrible. Other shows, like Umbrella Academy, lost me years ago, which means I was spared the disappointment many fans felt with the final season. There were lots of negative reactions to the new season of Dr. Who this year, but I’ve never gotten into that series, so I have nothing to say on the matter. I started Echo on Disney+ but I don’t think I ever finished the series. If I did, I genuinely don’t remember what happened. So much for the MCU’s streaming offerings this year!
Feel free to let me know your thoughts on any of these on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook, all places you should be following me at this point anyways (wink wink, nudge nudge).
Instead, this list will only include TV shows that I watched—for fairly obvious reasons. Some of these were pretty good, but ended in a way that left me super disappointed. Others were just flat out bad. Let’s dive right in. We’ll start with the most disappointing shows, then move on to the worst (though obviously there is crossover here).
The Most Disappointing TV Shows Of 2024
House Of The Dragon Season 2 (HBO)
There were a lot of great moments in House Of The Dragon’s second season, and I wanted very badly to love it, but the changes from the source material were so bizarre and infuriating, and the pacing was just dreadfully slow. In the end, the truncated season left out any kind of climactic battle and effectively left all the characters in almost the exact same position they were in at the end of Season 1: Waiting for the war to start. While Season 1 felt like a faithful adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, with some clever changes that fleshed out characters like Viserys I, Season 2 felt like the showrunner and writers decided to “make it their own” in all the worst, most arrogant ways. By the end, I was more disappointed in this series than any other in 2024. It does not bode well for Season 3.
Dune: Prophecy (HBO)
I suppose I didn’t have the highest hopes for this series for two reasons: First, I’m just not a Dune fanatic, and no screen adaptation of the Frank Herbert books has been what I hoped it would be, as much as Denis Villeneuve’s films certainly looked and sounded amazing. For another, I think focusing on the Sisterhood was a huge mistake. But I didn’t anticipate just how boring and cheap the whole thing would be. A lot of the actors feel like they’ve been plucked right out of a CW show for young adults and tweens. And each episode is glacially paced, with far too many exposition dumps. What a disappointingly mediocre show from HBO.
Presumed Innocent (Apple TV)
Jake Gyllenhaal was excellent in this adaptation of the Scott Turow novel and for almost the entire season I was glued to the TV. I wasn’t sure they could do justice to the book, or that it was necessary given that the Harrison Ford movie exists, but I loved the approach, with lots of great changes made to the original text including some really compelling courtroom drama. Peter Sarsgaard gave it his all as well. But the ending was terrible. I mean genuinely terrible. My daughter and her boyfriend watched this after I did, and when they were watching the finale I came in and they were totally into it and excited to see what happened. I came back in afterwards and they both looked glum and I asked them what they thought. “It was stupid,” they replied, all enthusiasm for the show gone. That just about sums it up.
The Boys Season 4 (Prime Video)
What was once the premiere superhero parody show on TV has devolved into silly shock value for shock value’s sake, and a lame attempt to make everything an analog for our current political moment. Oh did you know that Homelander is just Donald Trump actually? Yawn. Not only is it all way too on-the-nose at this point, but The Boys really did take things too far, turning a horrifying sexual assault on one of the main characters into a joke. Even showrunner Eric Kripke explicitly called the rape scene a joke, which is okay I guess because the victim was a man—or something. Not only has thes how diverged from the comics, it’s become a pale shadow of its former self. Crushing disappointment. Zero hype for Season 5.
Arcane Season 2 (Netflix)
I will say this: Arcane’s second season was really good for the most part, and still boasted some of the best animation I’ve ever seen in a TV show, but it was still a pretty massive downgrade from Season 1. It was pretty obvious that several seasons worth of story were compressed into one which led to a lot of rushed character development, weird transitions, time-jumps and entire subplots that never fully developed. It just wasn’t as satisfying as it ought to have been given what a near-perfect masterpiece this show was at first and genuinely could have been. It’s a real shame, but I still enjoyed it a great deal.
The Worst TV Shows Of 2024
#6 – The Ones Who Live (AMC)
After years of waiting, Rick Grimes and Michonne finally united in The Ones Who Live, another The Walking Dead spinoff that left me cold. I can’t say I was disappointed by this series because I had so little faith that it would do these beloved characters justice. I was not wrong. The show was lame from start to finish, with one of the most awkward final scenes imaginable, a reunion between Rick, Michonne and their children that was so bad I almost scrubbed it from my memory. Indeed, I almost missed this show on this list because I forgot about it almost as soon as it ended. Forgettable, ludicrous, bad.
#5 – Daryl Dixon: The Book Of Carol (AMC)
The latest The Walking Dead spinoff to land on AMC had an okay first season, but its ludicrous premise was just too much. Despite some very nice cinematography and some great new characters, I just couldn’t get into it. But Season 2 makes the first season look like a TV masterpiece in comparison. Daryl Dixon: The Book Of Carol amped up every preposterous element of the first season and double down on lazy writing. There were so many unbelievably moronic moments I could barely believe it, from a fortified compound that used all electric gates to keep out zombies (that would simply open if the generator went down) to Carol finding her way to France via a tiny plane that she just happened to stumble on the moment she needed it. I could go on, but there’s not space to list everything. Just awful.
#4 – Reacher Season 2 (Prime Video)
I really enjoyed the first season of Reacher on Prime Video, but the second was a total—and tonal—disaster. Idiotic bad guys, a dull plot, and Reacher playing second fiddle to his own team all conspired to make this one of the worst seasons of action TV out there. It appears the writers of this show forgot entirely who Jack Reacher actually is, turning him into a murderous psychopath who let’s a bad guy go just so he can shoot him down with a rocket. And Alan Richman, who is perfectly cast for the show, bulked up way too much for Season 2, making him an ungainly bodybuilder rather than the way Reacher is described in the books. Add to these complaints: Tacky fight scenes, bland cinematography and plot holes galore and you have yourselves a real stinker. Let’s hope Season 3 rights the proverbial ship. The only reason I’m giving this the #4 spot above Daryl Dixon, however, is because I’ve come to expect lousy Walking Dead content. I had my hopes up for Reacher, which makes this both Worst and Most Disappointing.
#3 – The Acolyte (Disney+)
A Jedi murder mystery set a hundred years before the events of the Skywalker saga sounds like a pretty cool premise for Star Wars. Too bad the entire thing was laughably amateurish. Hundreds of millions of dollars were thrown at this project despite the inexperience of its showrunner and creator. Marketing focused heavily on the show’s diversity—and defenders of the show called its detractors toxic bigots for not liking it—but as far as I’m concerned, giving a diverse cast a lousy script and then blaming fans for how bad it was is just condescending to everyone. The Acolyte missed on almost every conceivable level. The writing was sloppy, the story convoluted and the big twists at the end felt forced and rushed. Almost every interesting character was killed off, and the show’s attempts to leave us with some juicy cliffhangers fell flat. Disney canceled the show after one season—not because “toxic fans” complained about it on reddit, but because it was super expensive, had poor ratings and was genuinely terrible. The power of one…the power of two…the power of not many people actually watching this dumpster fire.
#2 – The Rings Of Power Season 2 (Prime Video)
I really, genuinely wanted to love The Rings Of Power. After all, I love The Lord Of The Rings and a new show set in the Second Age of Tolkien’s Middle-earth sounds pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the creators of this series not only have zero regard of the source material, they’re also talentless writers and terrible at filmmaking. There are almost no redeeming qualities about The Rings Of Power’s second season outside of a few strong performances from actors who frankly deserve much better scripts. Every single storyline in this show is a mess. Gandalf getting his name from “Grand Elf” while slumming it with Tom Bombadil in the desert was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. The fickle politics of Numenor make our own political system look pretty awesome by comparison. The dwarves are among the most moronic fantasy characters of all time, perhaps only losing out to the Harfoots and their distant cousins, the Stoors. Don’t even get me started on the elves. Or the battle scenes. The only good thing about this show are the Gandalf Roasts videos from impressionist and YouTuber Charlie Hopkinson. What an insult to Tolkien, to fantasy fans, to the entire genre itself. All that money and nothing to show for it. Bravo, Amazon. Bravo.
#1 – True Detective: Night Country (HBO)
At the very top of this list, somehow surpassing both The Acolyte and The Rings Of Power, is the Emmy-winning fourth installment of HBO’s once-great anthology series, True Detective. What makes this one even worse is just how lauded it was by TV critics and how it was positioned as some triumphant return for the series, a premium TV show and darling at the awards ceremonies. Despite being an insult to all that is good and holy in the world, Night Country was nominated for 19 Emmys, and walked away with Outstanding Lead Actress In A Limited Or Anthology Series Or Movie for Jodie Foster. I love Foster, but she in no way deserved this award (I had my issues with the fifth season of Fargo, but Juno Temple deserved this over Foster and it isn’t even close). Night Country was a new chapter in True Detective that was clearly meant to be its own show, but took on the True Detective brand. Creator Issa López included lots of Easter Eggs and memberberries to throw at fans—including one hilariously bad “time is a flat circle” moment—but the new season lacked everything that made previous seasons work.
Don’t get me wrong, True Detective is a mixed bag overall. The first season is one of the best seasons of television ever made, but Season 2 was a convoluted mess and Season 3 felt more than a little derivative of the first. Still, both those seasons make Night Country look like fan-fiction in comparison. As with The Acolyte, much of the marketing focused on the show’s diversity—its leads were women, it dealt with indigenous issues, I guess no other mystery show has ever done this before!—and when it came time to defend the show against its many detractors, the same old playbook was used: Angry fans of the series were “toxic” or “hated women” or were “racist” and it had nothing at all to do with the terrible writing, lack of any kind of compelling mystery, etc. etc. etc. Frankly, creating super unlikable female characters that act like the worst, most toxic male characters on TV and tossing in some “noble savage” tropes does not mean you’re empowering women or minorities. Quite the contrary. That the show’s creator and one of its leads chose to join the media in gaslighting fans only leaves an even more bitter taste in our collective mouths. That Lopez is now in charge of the True Detective brand going forward only confirms how out-of-touch Hollywood has gotten with its audiences.
Not only was this a terrible season of True Detective, it was one of the worst cop dramas I’ve ever had the misfortune of watching. Thankfully, I have an entire list of great female-led detective shows and mysteries that you can enjoy instead!
Watch my video discussion of these shows below:
What were your least-favorite, no-good, terrible TV shows of 2024? What did I miss? What do you disagree with me about? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
