We love heady dramas and foreign films as much as the next cinephile, but sometimes it’s nice to just turn our brains off and consume compellingly dumb trash TV. No disrespect to game shows everywhere, but most (with the exception of something like Jeopardy! or Only Connect) don’t require a lot of brainpower to follow while sitting on our couches with a pint of ice cream late at night, and that’s why we enjoy watching them so much. You don’t have to be a professional to love watching celebrities successfully (or not) becoming ballroom dancers, and you don’t have to have a million tracks on Spotify to appreciate a talented singer.
But greatness can’t exist without its opposite, and through the decades we’ve all been exposed to some pretty terrible game shows—most of which didn’t last longer than a season. For this list, we’ve plumbed the depths of the worst of the worst, the bad, the boring, and the reprehensible, and found ten truly terrible game shows that somehow got approved, filmed, and put on our TVs. From drama-mongering dating shows to competitions judging people only on their physical appearance, these are the worst game shows of all time.
The 10 Worst TV Game Shows of All Time
From boring to overcomplicated to just plain offensive, we’ve plumbed the depths of the last few decades of reality game show television to bring you the worst of the worst.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
READ MORE: The Weirdest Reality TV Shows Ever
The 10 Worst American Remakes of Foreign TV Shows
They may have been hits overseas, but the Americanized versions just didn’t translate.
