My husband and I watched, and laughed at on purpose, “Marry Me,” a new sitcom with this premise:
I actually recorded it because I thought it sounded like the worst show in history. We laughed.
So, what’s the absolute best show with the absolute worst premise?
Well, answering the original question (“Good TV show with the worst premise”), I’ll vote Man vs Food. Watch a guy eat at various diners before doing an eating contest against himself / the food.
It was only ever entertaining because of the presenter. And accordingly, later series were pretty sad, as he’d put on weight and looked fed up with the whole thing.
Firefly was a space-western, and is generally highly regarded.
I remember being a little befuddled after watching the first episode they aired (The Train Job). “What the hell? That was actually good.”
Well, it’s a ragtag bunch of unsuccessful cops, only they get permission to use surveillance on a couple of drug lords. And at the end of the season they sort of accomplish very little.
Mr. Ed
[ul]
[li]A sitcom, with wacky characters and hijinks ensuing, in an army hospital on the front line of a war[/li][li]High school football[/li][li]“It’s like Gilligan’s Island - but it’s a drama. And there’s magic.”[/li][li]The fake autobiography of a Roman Emperor[/li][/ul]
A show about nothing.
Person of Interest doesn’t have the worst premise, but it does continue to impress me by how they continue to keep it relatively smart despite the large number of cliched elements and an episodic format.
A blond teenaged girl cheerleader Chosen by the Powers That Be to fight the forces of darkness.
You mis-spelled “in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp”.
Bosom Buddies.A show about two men who dressed in drag to get cheap housing. It was derided as an excuse to shiw T&A, but it actually was funny and had a great cast.
A high school chemistry teacher turns to a life of crime when diagnosed with cancer. Whacky hijinks ensue.
OK, maybe it’s not the worst premise ever, but it doesn’t exactly scream out “the best thing that’s ever been on TV” either.
Maybe too soon, but recall Jimmy Kimmel’s description of GOTHAM: “This is a show for people who love everything about Batman except Batman … You know the part of every Batman movie that’s so boring, they skip over it? Now that’s a series.”
You will find that it really doesn’t hold up. It worked on the strength of the two leads. And it only worked for 1 season. Even they knew that the premise could not hold up. They abandoned the cross dressing in the 2nd season then it was cancelled.
A mash-up of Washington Irving stories, in which Ichabod Crane pulls a Rip Van Winkle & wakes up near modern Sleepy Hollow. Let’s add flashbacks to the American Revolution. And the Book of Revelation!
Let’s take a bunch of city folks, all strangers to each other, most of whom have never been out of the city, let alone gone camping, and strand them on a desert island with nothing but a machete and a pot to boil water in. We’ll come back in three days and make them do a bunch of obstacle courses and swimming competitions and see who survives.
Singing cops.
Not sure this one counts, because the premise was deliberately chosen to be absurd.
I has the same thought. I’d heard about it so many times (all here of course) and then noticed that it was only a handful of episodes* so I gave it a shot. After the first few I was like ‘it’s like a Western movie…in space, weird’. Of course, like, say, Star Wars a lot of the scenes take place in oddly Earth like settings, but still, it’s really good.
*It seems like whenever a show gets this much take (Star Trek, Dr Who etc) it’s like eight million episodes and I just don’t care to put that much effort into catching up.
Good TV show with the worst premise.