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If there’s one show that has dominated internet discourse these past few weeks, it’s All’s Fair. The widely panned Kim Kardashian vehicle, about a bunch of high-flying female divorce lawyers in visible thongs, has captured the world’s attention – for all the wrong reasons.
Clips of Kardashian’s comically expressionless face and voice while “acting” have cropped up all over my social media feed; Instagram has shown me countless reels compiling the best – read: most wince-making – lines of dialogue. Then there were the reviews filling up my news feed, notable because the show garnered zero stars – a notoriously difficult feat that only a handful of programmes have managed to accomplish over the years – from several publications.
Critics crowed over the terrible scriptwriting, questionable casting and wooden performances, while expressing surprise that so many big-hitting performers had agreed to participate. Speculation abounded that show creator Ryan Murphy must have some pretty serious dirt on Oscar-winner Glenn Close to secure her involvement through nefarious means.
The result of all this trash-talk? Not only has All’s Fair already been renewed for a second season, but it became the biggest Hulu Original scripted series to premiere in three years. The series immediately went straight to No 1 for Disney+ in the UK upon release.
This perhaps perfectly encapsulates the latest depressing trend in telly: making bad stuff pays. Not mediocre stuff, mind you. Not bang average. Not “schmeh” or fine or shrug. It has to be genuine, solid-gold garbage – so manifestly terrible that it will sink to the dizzying depths of the one-star review. Or, better yet, achieve the hallowed starless status.
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Reality star Kim Kardashian is comically expressionless in the Hulu show (Hulu)
In an overstimulated world jammed full of never-ending dopamine hits and distractions, the only way to cut through the noise is to stand out. A three-star review is death: not good enough to be worth seeking out, not bad enough to become its own object of powerful fascination. You must be superlative: the best or the worst. Five stars or zero stars. And, in fact, the latter is harder to get than the former (The Guardian has only ever awarded this accolade 18 times, for example) and likely to guarantee more eyeballs on screens. Managing to make a genuine lemon is the most bankable strategy going amid shrinking TV budgets and the threat of AI hanging over an industry in flux.
It’s easy to see this as an extension of online algorithms that have long created polarisation by rewarding extremes. Anger and rage-bait have historically been incentivised by social media; in 2021, leaked internal documents showed that Facebook prioritised posts that garnered angry reaction emojis over likes because they boosted engagement. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager and whistleblower, told British parliament that “anger and hate is the easiest way to grow on Facebook”. (Meta has since amended its algorithm to “demote” posts that provoke anger.)
Forget sex – these days, hate sells. And that applies to our watching habits, too. The very fact that the term “hate-watch” even exists is a testament to this, while viewing figures prove that a critical disaster is far from a flop. Just look at the “success” of the godawful Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That…, which people despised and yet ran for three seasons. Or Emily in Paris, which has provoked fury from Parisians and the rest of the world alike while drawing in tens of millions of viewers and spawning soon-to-be five seasons.
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So bad it’s good? Kardashian and Naomi Watts in ‘All’s Fair’ (Disney)
Then there are the myriad structured reality shows, from Love Is Blind and MAFS to Selling Sunset and the endless Real Housewives franchise. Viewers don’t put these on in spite of them being trash, but because they’re trash. It’s the perfect fodder to have playing ad infinitum in the background while you cook dinner, do the ironing or – more likely – simultaneously spend time looking at another, smaller screen. All’s Fair could equally fall into this category, too: something to keep half an eye on while occasionally laughing in derision amid a three-hour scrolling session.
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Making a certified loser, in fact, is such a winning manoeuvre that it’s hard to believe studios aren’t in on the joke. There are some real Hollywood heavyweights involved in All’s Fair: Murphy has created and presided over numerous hugely popular shows, including Nip/Tuck, Glee and American Horror Story. The cast features Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson and Niecy Nash-Betts, who are all, alongside Close, listed as executive producers. Are we expected to swallow that no one in this experienced and talented lineup knew they were making a turkey? Far easier to imagine that they created an intentional dud, so sensationally awful it was assured to secure column inches and viral acclaim before the first episode had even aired. No such thing as bad PR, and all that.
My fear is that the more we buy into this hateful, hate-watching fad, the more we ensure our TVs will wind up drowning in dross. After all, when zero stars become more valuable than five, why shoot for the stars at all?
