The Worst New TV Shows of 2020

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 22, 2020

What were the biggest television duds of the past year? Above are the lowest-scoring first-year primetime TV series (including limited series and specials) debuting in the United States between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020. 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 19, 2020, and must have at least 4 reviews from professional critics to qualify.

9 of 11 photo by Katie Yu/Hulu

40 #9: Helstrom (Hulu)

Likely the final live-action Marvel series to air on Hulu—and, with a recent cancellation, it won't come back—this 10-episode horror series starred Elizabeth Marvel as the institutionalized mother of two adult children (Tom Austen, Sydney Lemmon) with superpowers who moonlight as demon hunters, drawing on their backgrounds as the offspring of Satan. It was supposed to kick off a shared universe of Marvel horror shows, but given the dismal critical response to Helstrom, we should probably be glad it's not.

“'Helstrom,' the series, is void of everything that defines 'Helstrom,' the comic. This is an ongoing problem with comic book shows and movies: The endless search for respectability and gravity in stories about superpowered people fighting evil in spandex. Here, the search ends with pouting dourness and tedium.” —Andrew Crump, The Playlist

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