It’s Better To Watch Paint Dry Than These 5 Netflix TV Failures

Netflix produces a lot of shows. Much like with any other streaming service or network, some of the series are good, others aren’t.

That’s okay. It’s a part of life, and you deal with the occasional dud. Having said that, Netflix has also produced serious stinkers – shows so terrible that you want to sue executives for the time you can never get back. Yeah, yeah, there will always be that one contrarian who defends these programs to the death, but let’s be real here: the following shows are bleach for the eyes.

‘Real Rob’ is as unfunny as it comes

Rob Schneider made a career for himself as the goofy supporting sidekick in ’90s comedies. Viewers experienced a chuckle or two whenever his oddball characters appeared on screen for brief moments and did silly things. Yet, no one really wanted to see him as a lead actor. Exhibit A: the Deuce Bigalow movies that have aged like a 100-year-old moldy sandwich. Exhibit B: The Animal – a stronger contender for the movie that kills brain cells faster than drinking gasoline.

Somehow, Netflix wasn’t satisfied with punishing us with further Adam Sandler and Kevin James comedies, so the streaming service pulled out the ace of grenades: it gave Schneider a sitcom titled Real Rob based on his real life. Oh, boy! It’s about as funny as a colonoscopy and charming as a poke to the eye. It’s bottom-of-the-barrel humor from a comedian who’s never had people clamoring to see or hear more of him. But hey, kudos to Schneider’s agent for securing two seasons of Real Rob.

‘Chasing Cameron’ is the weirdest reality show about someone nobody knows

Did anyone actually hear of Cameron Dallas before Chasing Cameron? Apparently, he was a famous social media influencer on Vine. Remember Vine? Neither do I. Elon Musk wants to revive it, so I gather that it must have been terrible if he likes it.

For some reason, Netflix decided to throw a reality show at Dallas in 2016, and the results are bizarre to say the least. You watch Dallas and his friends behave as if they’re famous and matter to the social media world, when the reality is 95% of the world’s population has no clue who these people are. It would be mildly humorous if this wasn’t the case with every second social media influenza.

‘Richie Rich’ is the poorest of them all

Remember the Richie Rich comics and live-action adaptation starring Macaulay Culkin? Those were good times, right? Its comedic tone naturally lends itself to become a breezy half-hour show on Netflix – so much so that you wonder why no one else attempted to do it before 2015. Well, in this case, someone forgot to inject the actual humor or charm of the source material into this two-season run, because if fun was being handed out for free, Richie Rich would still be standing in line on another continent. 

Richie Rich, starring Jake Brennan as the titular character, is nothing short of a slog to get through. For one, it hardly shares anything in common with the source material, which makes the whole name of the show that more baffling. In this story, Richie’s father, Cliff (Kiff VandenHeuvel) is a loser, while Richie made his fortune turning vegetables into clean energy. Second of all, it sucks so bad. It’s not entertaining, funny, nor memorable in the slightest. If anything, the only shining light is Jenna Ortega as Darcy, who demonstrates that she deserves better than this.

‘Resident Evil’ makes the movies look like ‘Casablanca’

Resident Evil fans possess a complicated relationship with Paul W. S. Anderson’s movies. Sometimes, they follow canon; sometimes, they don’t. The franchise doesn’t make sense, since the video game series contains a solid storyline throughout the different installments, so why the need to radically alter it for another medium?

Netflix received the chance to right the wrongs when it turned Resident Evil into a series. The casting of the late Lance Reddick as Albert Wesker went down like a treat, while the news that the show would explore the history of the dastardly Umbrella Corporation sounded promising too. Yet, this series makes the same mistakes as the movies: it can’t just stick to what makes the games so appealing in the first place. It needs to rewrite history and do its own thing. It’s to the point that you wonder: Why does anyone pick up a popular IP to adapt and choose to change everything that makes fans love it? Do Hollyweird executives hate fandoms that much?

‘Emily in Paris’ because it’s ‘Emily in Paris’

Please tell us who is watching this show, so that we can come over with a box of DVDs, Blu-rays, books, or tickets to the cinema. Seriously, just stop watching Emily in Paris. We don’t even want to talk about it anymore.