There’s a lot of love going on around here. Best this, best that. It’s about time we stuck a boot in. That’s what we do. You have to balance the light with the shade don’t you? And while there’s no doubt that, on reflection at least, 2008 has been a cracking year for television, there’s been some absolute trouts on the box. Naturally, there will be those of you who will expect The X Factor or I’m A Celebrity to make an appearance, but they’re too easy… and besides, they have some value to those that like ‘em. However, there are some shows that aren’t worth much more than a soiled nappy in a deep-end.
Related: Worst Shows of 2007 | Worst Shows of 2006
10. Clone
“The laughter track was annoying and, to be honest, so was pretty much everything else.” So spake our Paul. Clone was a show that promised a lot by simple virtue of the fact that it starred Mark Gatiss. However, it was a load of old shit.
9. ITV’s Football Coverage
ITV are showing more and more football these days, which is a good idea as most blokes will watch absolutely any football match on the telly. I’m one of those blokes… unless the coverage is on ITV. Fact is, the presenters, the pundits, the camera work, the commentators… absolutely everything about ITV’s coverage is complete dross. Quite why ANYONE would see fit to giving an actual wage to Andy Townsend or Jim Beglin is beyond me.
8. Miss Naked Beauty
The basic premise of this show was quite kind and nice. Promote a natural beauty who is smart, sassy and representative of the woman on the street? Gok Wan bustled about being generally queeny and enthusiastic… however, the whole show was spoiled by a bunch of braying ass-minded fuckwit judges who did their very best to destroy and snipe at the would-be models and make for consistently dreadful viewing.
7. Scallywagga
I’ll leave this to one comment left on the site during a slating I gave a preview. It goes like this: “Utter, utter shite. This is why comedy should be vetted before it gets released in to the wild. This should have been put down at birth along with those who came up with this diabolical cack. BBC3, you should be ashamed.” Another commenter said “medioca lazy unoriginal horrid shit that plagues our tv”. In review, I (astonishingly) said “I’d rather watch Jim Davidson”. Jesus.
6. Oceans
New BBC nature show? Hurray? Fat chance. This was one of the most irritating shows ever aired. A bunch of yapping trustafarians on a boat all stroking each other’s cocks while sunkissing their locks. Awful, awful, awful.
5. Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen
Nigella didn’t let me down with her woefulness. Once more, she managed to push me to foul mouthed ranting and raving with her faux come-to-beddery and terrible acting. She made food that looked like complete rubbish, she made TV that was even worse.
Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen Review
4. Rock Rivals
Earlier in the year, I took part in an experiment that saw me watching nothing but ITV1 for a whole week. This landed slap bang in the middle of it. I’ll hand you over to my conclusion on this show: “I’d love to say that this was a gloriously trashy show which doesn’t take itself seriously, filled with cartoon like characters… but I can’t. Mainly because it’s barely a TV show at all. It’s a caricature of an idea. It’s so far removed from any creative process that it’s actually painful. It’s horrible and toe-curling to watch. It’s based on a format that is shallow enough as it is. I hope this horrendous programme disappears from our screens with great haste.”
3. Celebrity Juice
I’d love to give this turd of a show a kicking, but I won’t beat our Paul’s bile. He said “the show was awful and I felt awful after watching it,” before adding “If you see a worse television show this year I feel very sorry for you indeed,” neatly rounding off with a simple and direct “Dreadful shite.”
2. Bonekickers
Hey! Let’s get that woman who everyone kinda recognises and stick her in a show that crossed CSI tension with Time Team! Everyone likes Time Team right? Wrong. Even those that are obsessive about digging up the ground found this show so dreadful that they decided to bury themselves in the earth with a note saying “Bonekickers made me do it.”
Is Bonekickers the worst show ever made? | A second run for Bonekickers… why?
1. Coming of Age
By a light year, this was the worst show of 2008. So bad was it that I briefly considered jacking my job in as a TV critic… no lies. In my review, I said “Imagine the most tawdry, lazy, vapid, vacuous show you’ve ever seen and then multiply by a million. If you can imagine that, then you’re about a third of the way to understand just how dismal this show is,” before adding “It’s the TV equivalent of a dog getting an erection.” I wasn’t alone either.
One reader commented “I turned onto this and my soul died” with another spitting “Right, gimme a sheet of paper, 12 pints of Guinness and a vindaloo and I’ll sh*t out a better story and better jokes than this.” Another called fans of the show “mentally retarded” before adding “I don’t actually believe that these people supporting the show are real. I can only assume it is some runner at the BBC being told to represent the ‘yoof’. Just unspeakably bad.” Without doubt, Coming of Age is the worst thing ever broadcast in television history. There isn’t a word invented to tell you how bad it is.
TXTSPK Review of Coming of Age | Normal Review of Coming of Age
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