Content Shifter: The 9 Worst New Shows of 2022

So far, 2022 has cranked out some decent new TV: Inventing Anna, Severance, Pam & Tommy, Peacemaker, Single Drunk Female, The Afterparty, even The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, whatever the hell that was. Another year locked in the house is shaping up nicely.

They can’t all be gems, however. Here are nine of the worst new TV series that have premiered in 2022—avoid them at all costs (if they haven’t already been canceled).

Adults Adopting Adults (A&E)

It’s all right there in the title: Adults Adopting Adults, though The Real Sex Prisoners of Ohio would have been more accurate. AAA was canceled after three episodes in February because a 59-year-old adoptive “dad” was oozing severe creeper vibes toward his new 20-year-old “daughter” (who was also pregnant, BTW). A&E says Adults Adopting Adults was canceled due to low ratings but didn’t confirm if the unaired seven episodes would be sold to PornHub’s Daddy Issues channel.

How I Met Your Father (Hulu)

How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 2005–14) is one of the ultimate “Not as Good as You Remember” sitcoms, a flaccid Friends clone that had eight years to come up with a series finale but blew it worse than The Sopranos and Lost combined. This year’s How I Met Your Father, starring Hilary Duff, is at least more racially diverse (you know, like New York), but may as well have been called Lizzy McGuire Gets Laid. Naturally, Hulu is making a Season 2.

Good Sam (CBS, Paramount+)

A family drama built on the minutiae of hospital hierarchy? No wonder CBS hasn’t launched a successful midseason series since Airwolf. Good Sam is Dr. Samantha Griffith (Sophia Bush), a heart surgeon who’s elevated to hospital chief when her boss/father (Jason Isaacs) falls into a coma because that’s how it works. Then dickish Dr. Dad wakes up and now has to answer to his daughter—oh, what a pickle! There’s still time to reboot this as a laugh-tracked sitcom, CBS.

Bel-Air (Peacock)

All the money NBC wasted on Super Bowl promos for Bel-Air would have been better spent on cash drops over random American cities, “Please watch this shit!” notes paperclipped to the bills. Since you haven’t been paid to watch it, Bel-Air is a “dramatic reimagining” of ’90s comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, wherein Philly kid Will moves in with his rich relatives in Los Angeles. This serious take seriously sucks, and not just because Carlton is now a Xanax junkie.

Astrid & Lilly Save the World (Syfy)

Teen outcasts Astrid (Jana Morrison) and Lilly (Samantha Aucoin) accidentally open a door to a demon portal, and now it’s up to them to protect their town (and, as per the title, the world) from the unleashed monsters. Some critics have called Astrid & Lilly Save the World a worthy successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer; this critic says 2016 British horror-comedy Crazyhead did it better, smarter and funnier. Watch the one and only season of that on Netflix, instead.

Fairview (Comedy Central)

For almost every new season of South Park, Comedy Central attempts to produce a new animated series to pair it with—anyone remember Brickleberry? Legends of Chamberlain Heights? Jeff & Some Aliens? Garbage. The new Fairview at least tries to be topical on current news and cultural shifts, so that’s … also garbage. It comes from the same smugsters who make Tooning Out the News, a Showtime series so insufferable it makes Pod Save America seem subtle.

Promised Land (Hulu)

It’s not that sprawling Latin-American telenovela Promised Land is bad; it just didn’t belong on ABC (which canceled the show after airing five episodes and moved the final five to Hulu). ABC should stick to broadcasting moron fodder like The Bachelor, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars and hand over all of its dramas and comedies to Hulu. Like Big Sky, Hulu couldn’t possibly do worse by it than ABC, which only drops new episodes during Mercury Retrograde.

The Good Dish (Syndicated)

When TV quack Dr. Oz decided to run for U.S. senate as a Republican, he had to abandon his syndicated misinformation cannon The Dr. Oz Show (or at least he thought he did—doesn’t he know that Republican campaign ethics are a thing of the past, like COVID and daytime TV?). Its replacement was The Good Dish, a food-and-talk fluffer hosted by his daughter, Daphne, who’s so personality-deficient that she’s routinely outshined by pull-apart garlic bread.

Stuck (TLC)

Designed as a companion series for the inexplicably popular series Dr. Pimple Popper (who’s still a more reputable physician than Dr. Oz), Stuck chronicles the hospital horror stories of foreign objects lodged in human bodies—finally, TLC is once again The Learning Channel. The first episode of Stuck set the bar impossibly high with “Vibrator In the Rectum,” which means a potential (nah, certain) second season will have to lead with “Fleshlight Fucktastophe.”