If you get a secret thrill from reading bad reviews, this week has basically been your Christmas. This is when the embargo dropped for Ryan Murphy’s new Kim Kardashian-starring Hulu legal drama All’s Fair, and hoo boy. Lucy Mangan’s zero-star extravaganza was a classic of the form, starting with the line “I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad,” and only getting more despairing from there.
But then something incredible happened. More All’s Fair reviews started popping up, and they were just as scathing. Every last one of them, without exception, absolutely hated it. In his zero-star review, the Times’s Ben Dowell observed that the show felt like it had been written “by a toddler who couldn’t write ‘bum’ on a wall”. USA Today’s Kelly Lawler wrote: “It’s so stilted, artificial and awkward not even a glass of wine and leftover Halloween candy can make it remotely enjoyable to view.” The Wrap said: “One wonders if Murphy is engaged in some sort of social experiment to see if he can get away with making the most transparently terrible show on Disney’s dime.” In his one-star review (comparatively a rave), the Telegraph’s Ed Power called the show a “disaster zone of soapy plotting and reeking dialogue”.
