Worst TV moments of 2025 - and Meghan Markle misses out on top spot
2025 was a year of TV blunders, from Netflix controversies to BBC apologies.
Meghan Markle's show was at number 5
(Image: Jake Rosenberg/Netflix)It was the year Netflix’s Adolescence raised questions in Parliament and BBC1 let Russell T Davies keep running, sorry, ruining the Doctor Who universe with sixth-form issues and fifth-rate plots. The Beeb were forced to apologise yet again for the relentless antisemitism of BBC Arabic, and we were still laughing about that cheating couple caught on Kiss-Cam at a Coldplay concert. What an embarrassment! Fancy being caught on camera enjoying Coldplay. But what were the worst TV moments of 2025? Here is my handy guide.
5 Meghan’s Christmas special
The trailer featuring the Duchess of Sussex skipping around Christmas pine trees in her wellies was bad enough. But the show, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration, was a special kind of psycho-babbling jingle hell. Who else but Prince Harry’s bride would claim that pulling Xmas crackers was “a real moment of connectivity”? Come again?
Some chap from her podcast was on hand to assure us that Megs was “authentically trying to be herself,” brushing over the fact that she was inauthentically doing so in someone else’s house, wearing clothes that weren’t hers, and plainly pretending to be overjoyed by all manner of phoney baloney. Nonsense abounded, from Meghan’s certainty that British Xmas crackers always include a sweet, to lingo so mangled it could have been AI generated.
She made cacio e pepe-flavoured snacks (cheesy carbs) and savoury choux pastry buns, which were neither festive nor simple enough for a throwaway snack. Sadly for Megs, Netflix have rethought their commitment to pay the former Royals $100m for five years of dull, staged, soft-focus content, and are going to be a lot fussier about what they commission from them.
(Image: Jake Rosenberg/Netflix)
4. And Just Like That – the final flush
Several critics have used the ‘s’-word to describe the dire Sex & The City spin-off, And Just Like That, but few of us expected the finale to end with a literal over-flow of unflushed human waste. Thanks to a plumbing disaster, Miranda’s clogged toilet regurgitated poo all over her swanky Manhattan apartment, which for once stank as badly as the scripts.
US reviewers called this bad-taste finale ‘Poop-Gate’. In fairness though, after three badly-written, badly-acted, and monumentally misconceived series, maybe the show’s cack-handed ending was a fitting faecal metaphor.
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3 Hannah Spearitt, SAS: Who Dares Quits
On episode one of August’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, actress and former pop poppet Hannah Spearritt assured the special forces instructors that she was “pretty determined”, adding “I wouldn’t say I give up easily”. She also vowed not to quit on the first day. Hannah then proceeded to give up easily and quit on the first day, voluntarily withdrawing before the third ad break.
By then all she had done was jump into the Irish Sea, and swim 45 metres – less than one length of an Olympic Pool; and then stand in line holding her Bergen backpack. Hannah’s agonised face-pulling was Bafta-worthy. Seriously, this was her finest acting since she danced in her pants on ITV’s Primeval.
Louie “I’m a survivor” Spence followed her out. And the next day Chloe Burrows and Tasha Ghouri (both Love Island alumni) bottled it too, voluntarily withdrawing on route to the Hang Tough challenge. Burrows, who had said she wanted to try her “absolute hardest” and not leave half-heartedly, ripped off her armband and gasped for breath. “I can’t do it,” she gulped. DS Mark ‘Billy’ Billingham was understandably furious. “Can’t do what?” he yelled. “We’ve walked 300 metres up a f*****g hill!”
A shocking lack of effort from all four of them. It would be uncharitable to suggest that some micro-slebs sign up for the show just for easy money. But celebrity flasher John Barrowman quit 32 minutes into filming last year and still copped a £30,000 fee. To save the format, and do justice to its highly competent staff, it needs more challenges and fewer sob stories. It also needs to book people who have a modicum of fighting spirit, and make sure they’re recognisable – for the right reason. I’m not sure how convicted drug mule Michaella McCollum counted as a celeb, or drag queen Bimini, or Rebecca Loos, still cashing in on her 22-year-old Beckham affair claim. Nice work if you can get it.
2 Helen George, Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters
Jaws met Bores on ITV’s celeb-reality series, essentially a replay of 2005’s Celebrity Shark Bait. But none of the contenders had a chance of getting significant camera time once Call The Midwife actress Helen ‘Trixie’ George got started. The seven participants were told they would meet bull sharks on their first day. “In the water?” gasped Helen. No, Hel, on the dance floor at the beach bar gulping down cocktails… Later, encountering a stingray, she exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s gone straight for my vagina! Ooh! Sucky sucky!” What odds she’ll land the jungle next year? Helen was there, she said, to overcome her fear of the sea so she can learn to swim and enjoy holiday dips with her daughters. Even a shark wouldn’t swallow that. So Ms George, what made you choose a well-paid, profile-raising trip to the Bahamas over swimming lessons in Poplar Baths?
No celebs were eaten by sharks on the misfiring show, as the real point behind the hype and hysteria wasn’t to terrify a shiver of famous and semi-famous faces for our sadistic amusement, but to demonstrate that the danger isn’t an ocean full of sharks but an ocean without them.
(Image: ITV)