The 10 Worst Netflix Shows Ever

Ten years ago, Netflix released House of Cards, its first Netflix-produced original series, and the world of television was never the same. Since then, Netflix has released approximately one billion (estimated) original shows, turned an industry on its head, and changed the way entertainment is produced and consumed (swallow a season whole, kids!). And while Netflix has several hits — Stranger Things! The Crown! Sex Education! to name a few — the sheer overflow of content and laws of probability dictate that some of Netflix's shows aren't going to be amazing. In fact, some of them will be real stinkers. 

To celebrate a decade of Netflix's loose restrictions on greenlighting "content," we've put together this list of the 10 worst shows Netflix has ever made. Some are bad streaming experiments gone wrong, some are bad collaborations with the wrong people, and some are just bad! 

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10. Gypsy

Where do we start? With the insensitive title that has nothing to do with the show? With the wasted cast that includes Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup? Or with the plodding story of a whiskey-swigging psychiatrist (Watts) who pretends to be a journalist to infiltrate her patients' relationships? This thriller with erotic undertones is tragically unsexy and flat, like a higher-budget Lifetime movie with a worse script. Gypsy walked so Netflix's other erotic thrillers could strut, though, and became a model for single-season miniseries — even though Gypsy was never intended to be a miniseries and was canceled after one season — featuring powerful women involved in sexy thrills and betrayal. [Trailer]

9. Chelsea

The biggest problem with Chelsea wasn't the stale humor and bad sketches; it was the idea and execution of a streaming talk show. This was a grand experiment that Netflix was clearly willing to roll the dice with — is it an evergreen show, is it a live broadcast, is it just a place to promote other Netflix shows? — and a reasonable outlet for host Chelsea Handler's overall deal with the streaming giant. Branded as a new kind of talk show, it was anything but, mimicking what broadcast networks have been doing for decades without any of the tradition and legacy behind it. Chelsea should have disrupted the talk show format; instead it just reminded us why it's such a dying genre. [Trailer]

8. Real Rob

Adam Sandler has a million-movie deal with Netflix, so it's only fair that his bud Rob Schneider got his own show. This 2015 sitcom is one of those "it's me, the comedian in the show's title! (but in a heightened reality)" shows, like Louie or Seinfeld, but without any of the insight or humor. It has elements of all the shows it's inspired by, including a standard TV-style narrative about Rob's career as a comedian, a look at his home life married to a Mexican woman, sit-down documentary-style interviews with Rob and other characters, and snippets of Rob's stand-up act. And almost all parts feature jokes about "balls." It all comes together in a frenetic, chaotic mess that doesn't make much sense or generate laughs. Still, Netflix gave it TWO seasons. [Trailer]

7. Iron Fist

There was a time when anything Marvel was a sure hit. Then, in 2017, came Season 1 of Marvel's Iron Fist. The final series in Netflix's brief dalliance with Marvel was by far its worst, especially in its first season, with lifeless action sequences and flat characters that felt like a Marvel series made just because Netflix could rather than because it should. Iron Fist was also embroiled in a whitewashing controversy when Game of Thrones' Finn Jones was cast as the lead instead of an Asian actor. (Though Iron Fist was white in the comics, which he first appeared in in 1974, criticism of the White Savior trope led fans to hope for a more progressive change to the character.) Season 2 was an improvement, but by then the Marvel-Netflix pact was all but dead. [Trailer]

6. Disjointed

There aren't enough dank nugs in Humboldt County to make this marijuana comedy from Chuck Lorre funny. Debuting amid the wave of pot legalization in America in 2017, Disjointed is a workplace comedy starring Kathy Bates as the proprietor of a dispensary in Los Angeles. Low hanging buds, right? The problem isn't that it was made — the premise was a no-brainer for some network — the problem is that Disjointed wasn't written by actual stoners and is full of bogus stereotypes, lazy pot jokes, and DOA breakaway sketches. Weed is funny! Disjointed is not. [Trailer]

5. Insatiable

Insatiable could have been just a bad show about beauty pageants and deep desires, but its huge whiff on dark comedy involving body image, race, and sexuality made it one of the most criticized Netflix series of all time, launching an industry of Insatiable-slamming think pieces from around the internet. Debby Ryan starred as a formerly overweight woman who is recruited by a disgraced pageant coach (Dallas Roberts) looking for a second chance after being accused of sexual assault. Ha ha, right? It was a prime example of punching down in a social climate that cherished lifting up. Still, Netflix ordered a second season. Hey, remember when Teenage Bounty Hunters was canceled after one season? [Trailer]

4. Fuller House

Netflix cannonballed into the pool of nostalgia-pandering reboots with this continuation of, of all things, Full House, a series that only exists in our memories because of our collective embarrassment at having watched it when our brains weren't fully developed. That didn't stop Fuller House from leaning into the dated goofiness of its source material, plucking a series from decades past and updating it in pretty much zero ways. There was no reason for Fuller House to exist, and one day, we'll have to explain that to our alien overlords in judgment day. Oh Mylanta! [Trailer]

3. Sexy Beasts

Netflix has had plenty of "success" with reality dating shows: Love Is Blind and Too Hot to Handle seemingly air three seasons a year now. But this adaptation of an international franchise should never have come to American shores. One of the guilty joys of dating shows is watching attractive people mack on each other, so why would Netflix think that putting elaborate animal prosthetics on single guys and gals and sending them on dates would do anything for us? After two well-promoted short seasons, Sexy Beasts was quickly put down. [Trailer]

2. Cooking with Paris

I don't even want to know how many souls were offered to Beelzebub to get this atrocity on the air. 2021's Cooking with Paris was Paris Hilton's comeback to reality television, this time putting cameras in her kitchen to watch her make "food" with glittery utensils while looking into the camera with dead eyes and saying, "That's so hot." There was no instruction; there was just hanging out with Paris (and a friend) while she was a black hole of energy, sucking the life out of everyone watching like a televised succubus. There were many opportunities to rebrand herself here, but instead she regressed to the washed-up personality that made her a has-been. This meandering mess was Netflix's most undercooked show. Watch Selena + Chef instead. [Trailer]

1. The I-Land

The speech by the principal in Billy Madison about getting dumber was made for this astonishingly bad sci-fi mystery box drama that took all the elements from the later seasons of Lost and made them much, much worse. The premise sees a bunch of people stuck on an island with no memory of how they got there, and it's later revealed (spoiler alert) with a thud and a "who cares?" that they're all prisoners put in a simulation to test their rehabilitation efforts. The grand finale twist is that Natalie Martinez's Chase is actually an elderly lady. Oof. Anyone who watched this all the way through (me, sadly) is still recovering to this day. [Trailer]