The Worst New TV Shows of 2022

– December 15, 2022

What were the biggest television duds of the past year? In the gallery on this page we rank the lowest-scoring first-year primetime TV series (including limited series and specials) debuting in the United States between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding based on scores from December 13, 2022 and must have at least 4 reviews from professional critics to qualify.

10 of 11 photo by Adam Rose/Netflix

34 #1: The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On (Netflix)

Metacritic's Official Worst New TV Show of 2022.

We recommend moving on. Described as "ugly" and "sadistic" by the press—not words that you see every day in TV reviews—Netflix's latest dating reality series (from the creators of Love Is Blind) finds producers attempting to split up engaged couples on the cusp of marriage by re-pairing all of the participants in multi-week experiments. Does that mean one member of a couple must watch their fiancé date and flirt with somebody else for days on end? Yes, it does, and not even the presence of hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey can put a friendly face on the proceedings. As the headline in The Guardian's review put it, "This is reality TV so bad you will pray for the accelerated heat death of the universe."

Don't worry: There's more where this came from. A second season—technically a spinoff subtitled "Queer Love" and hosted by JoAnna Garcia Swisher—has already been filmed, and a French version of the series recently launched, with additional international versions to follow.

“It’s absolutely terrible. Morally, obviously, there is literally no justification for deliberately putting temptation in people’s way.” —Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

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