What's a highly-rated, critically acclaimed TV series that you couldn't get into, or have no interest in?

Almost all of them.

I eventaully got into it, but Mad Men took me more than a few tries

Call me a monster, but Breaking Bad. It is just feel bad and cringe, I hate it lol.
- I didn’t care for Breaking Bad, but I did enjoy “Better Call Saul” up until the last season. 🤷‍♂️
- Some of the early episodes really show their age. It's definitely still worth watching in 2025, but it is an old show at this point.
  
  Iirc first episode is a banger, then mixed levels throughout season 1, most of season 2 was basically braindead, then decent quality for the remainder? Been a long time since I watched it.
- Really? Damn, I mean to each their own, but the show started getting really interesting in the episode where Walter brought in the fulminated mercury...
- Yeah I couldn't stand it, and came to the comments because I was sure it would already be mentioned.
  I stuck through season 1, pretending that the character's arcs were believable and fast forwarding through some of the brutality, then gave up.
  A friend convinced me to try again, but the seconds time I gave up after the season with the shots of the pool debris at the start. The payoff on that felt cheap and vaguely a violation of chekovs gun. After that I had to tell the friend who wanted me to watch it that I was done and wouldn't be trying again.
  
  I saw Breaking Bad all the way through when it's final season was on. Recently tried to rewatch it and stopped when second season started cause I remembered how much I hated that plane crash.
  Which is a shame because season 4 is an absolute masterpiece. It's like a chess match between Walt and Gus with Jesse as pawn.
  
  I have now tried 3 separate times to get through it. I always get bored, or honestly I really hate Walters wife. She is so incredibly cringey and hipocritical that it turns me off from the whole show. He does something that only affects him so he can try to improve his family, she takes it offensively. He gives up and she's pissed because they're poor. She cheats and then gets mad at him for some reason. She's just a bitch, and made me stop watching.
- I'm so with you. I don't think I know a single person who has seen Breaking Bad and didn't like it. Meanwhile I hated it.
- Yeah I don't blame you. Watched the whole thing, but it was pretty hard to get into for exactly the reasons you stated, and my gf and I would probably have stopped if Better Call Saul (the episode of BB, not to be confused with the spinoff series of the same name) and the character it introduced hadn't brought in some sorely-needed levity.
- I can't even start it. It just sounds so "omg gotta sell drugs so quirky!!"
  It's also one of those shows that every dude with bad taste loves to love hahaha
  
  A broke teacher who's wife is pregnant with their 2nd child finds out he has cancer and is given a short time to live needs to leave money for his family after he passes so they won't struggle. Where the fuck did you get sell drugs to be quirky from?

the office. the documentary/handheld camera style cinematography is nauseating to watch. see also: parks & rec and similarly-shot titles.
- It took me several attempts to watch parks & rec. It ended up being one my favorite. I've tried The Office a couple times and couldn't do it. Same with Sunny.
  
  The office had to happen to open the door for the genre to the general public. So I say thanks to it, we got the more refined parks and rec. Watching the office back in the day was hilarious, but now it's clear that it only walked so parks and rec could run.
  
  It's Always Sunny wasn't worth watching until season 3, imho and even then it had a lot of dead rubber.
- It took me like 3 attempts to get in to The Office so I don't blame you

Big Bang Theory
Didn't work for me. So dull. Felt like it was made twenty years earlier than it was.
- It's lowkey offensive to autistic people too. Young Sheldon did much better at that
- BBT is critically acclaimed in the same way the Big Mac is the world's most popular burger.
- Also mostly sex jokes disguised as smart people humor. It quickly gets old.
  
  Haha xbox means nerds means smart means genius
- They may as well call it The Big Gangbang Theory because it portrays nerd/geeks the same way porn portrays sex.

Game of thrones, tried and failed at least twice
- Hey, at least you didn't have to suffer through the ending.
  
  I only had to suffer through the ending, still makes me mad.
  The story, if anyone is bored...
  I was on a work retreat/hack-a-thon and the final episode was being broadcast that night. I'd tried and failed to find any part of game of thrones interesting in the past, I'd never seen a complete episode.
  Everyone is there glued to the TV, I'm at the dinning room table trying to get some kind of work done, but ended up watching most of the episode.
  What a massive pile of crap I thought to myself, no idea what these people are on about.
  I'm glad everyone agreed it sucked, but really annoyed that is the only episode I've seen, and I will never waste my time on it.
- My dad is always stunned that I never really got into GoT. I tuned in for a couple of seasons at the beginning, but life just got too busy for these kinds of big shows.

I tried to watch Downton Abbey with my wife. I can appreciate the acting, costumes, and sets, but I could really not have cared less about the minutiae of the lives of 1910s British upper class and their servants

For me, The Expanse.
- The first couple of episodes drag, but it picks up later. You might try the books instead. Or even the audiobooks — the narrator for those does an excellent job.
  
  I did try the first audio book and found myself unmoved. It wasn't awful, but I wasn't as impressed as most seem to be. I'm glad it was enjoyed, but I was ready for it to be over long before it was.
  That was around six years ago, though. I might feel differently if I tried again today.
  Thanks for the recommendations!
- I can understand this one. I enjoyed the series enough to go back and read the books, but the acting overall was not great

I never could get into The Sopranos, and I don't think I'll ever get around to scratching it off my watchlist.
- It took me a very long time before. I finally watched that show a few years ago. I didn’t care for it in the beginning, but towards the middle it got a bit more interesting. I didn’t care for the ending. Overall, it’s not gonna be one of those shows I go back to and binge again and again. But I was glad to at least have seen it once.

Boardwalk Empire. I really tried.
Also, house of the Dragon. I made it mostly through the first season, but then I just couldn’t take it anymore.
- What could you not take?
  
  it

Every reality series.
- the first season of ones like survivor, bb, tar, were better than every season after. before all the strategies and stuff got worked out. it was 'new' to you and to those on the shows. now it's just same-old, same-old every single season.
  
  It's hard to argue with success. If I remember correctly, those early seasons had the best viewership numbers for their time.
  For me, it's the basic format itself that's unpalatable. It's not stone cold reality like sports or some documentaries, although those can be embellished, too. It's also not as polished as scripted series. It feels to me as if a network executive put a concept, a soap opera production, and a rough draft of a script into a blender and pressed "puree." It makes so much money that I can't argue that it's not clever. I just can't relate to it. There's probably a bunch of popular stuff I like that other people don't care for, so it's important to be able to criticize something while respecting other opinions.

The White Lotus. I got 2-3 episodes in and was just bored. None of the characters were likable so I just didn't care.
- Same, why should I care about these people?
  The only character that seemed like an actual character in S1 was the manager, and...
  
  I mean, that's the point of the show.... Their problems are ridiculous and petty, the entire point is to show what rich people think problems are
- Saw first one season and decided not to bother with it. Too cynical for me.

White Lotus. Just couldn't care about anything happening.
- Ditto. Just didn't do it for me

That I watched it all the way through? The Expanse.
I watched the first season and then stopped? Stranger Things.
Have no interest in? Game of Thrones
- Watching just the first season of Stranger Things was probably the right way to do it. The first season is a complete story, and all the other seasons just feel like Netflix milking its success for $$$.
  Other shows where you can watch the first season and stop for similar reasons: Handmaids Tale, Westworld.
  
  Don't agree for HT, agree for Ww
- So, S1 of the expanse was my favorite season by far, mostly because I loved the introduction to the belter ethos, it set a tableau for the rest of the season which was much more action oriented.
  
  I mostly liked season 1, except for the main character
  
  S1 was so cool! The whole detective, noir thing I absolutely loved!

Arrested Development. I can’t do Bateman AND Howard’s narration.

Peaky blinders - I love this era with movies and what not but this show just didn’t hit for me
- Incredibly gorgeous visuals, incredibly meh series.

Breaking bad.
- Same. I watched maybe half of the first episode and then left to go fold laundry and never finished the episode.
- I caught the complete series 1 by accident in a TV marathon when I have never heard of it before.
  I was glued to the screen the whole night until 6am. It was so good. Probably my most memorable TV experience after the twist in from Dusk Till dawn.
  I never really finished the series, I quit on series 3 or 4.
  Im sure I have watched all episodes by now, but I lost interest, because a lot of the story fehlt dragged out too much, when the first series was constant progress.

Arcane. Despite all the writers effort to create emotional investment it was like someone's D&D backstory for their edgy rogue
- Would you mind naming a couple shows you actually do like? As a huge Arcane fan, I'm intrigued to hear what you consider good.
  
  Sure: JoJo's bizarre adventure, Delicious in Dungeon, Star Trek DS9, Bob's Burgers.

Mad Men

Banshee. Went into it expecting something like Justified where it showed small town sheriff stuff but no. It was just flashbacks to before he became sheriff and constant sex scenes.
- I mean, it had some Justified to it, but you can't beat some good old Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins.
  
  Good thing Deadwood exists. So far that's been able to scratch that itch.

There is just not a single AMC show I can get into. I don't know if it's the style or what but I just none of them work for me.
- I thought I was the only one...

" Breaking Bad - I had to force myself to watch 5 episodes. Just didn't get it.
" The Sopranos - I don't like mob stuff. I didn't like the godfather either.
" The Wire - this one surprised me because I generally like cop shows. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind.

Mr. Robot. Finished season 1 and decided not my cup of tea. Hated every single character in it. Felt same way about White Lotus too.
- I got a through a few episodes but just couldn't go further. I never wanted to see any of the characters ever again

The office and Big Bang Theory. The office wasn't funny at all, more of a boring, and same with BBT, too nerdish to keep going, Sheldon was somehow funny.
- Same. Curated clips get the point across and are enough.

Spartacus. I had never heard of it until I stopped by a friend's house and they had it on. They told me it was neat and showed me the scene they were watching. Like clockwork, the scene immediately changed to full frontal dick. My friend downplayed saying that happens once or twice, his wife piped up and said nah it happens every episode with a grin on her face. They continued to talk about how many dicks are in the show and i just couldn't be bothered to investigate on my own.

sex and the city , Seinfeld, and friends

Breaking Bad. It's too painful. Jessie is so dumb I can't watch it. Walter's motivations are also so randomized… it all drives me banana nuts.
- for sure had to power through and skipped a lot of episodes. Better call saul o the other hand was nice till it got to the end. Hated every bit of that phase.

Gangs of London. The Gentlemen. Game of Thrones.

Scavengers Reign. I liked the story, but the acting was so dull. So never finished it.

The Gentlemen. Game of Thrones.