Kim Kardashian is one of the most well-known celebrities in the world, so after getting praise for her acting debut on American Horror Story: Delicate, it was only natural that Ryan Murphy would jump at the chance to collaborate again. The result is All’s Fair, a new legal drama whose first three episodes hit the 2025 TV schedule on November 4, and boy are critics worked up about this one.
Starring alongside Kim Kardashian on All’s Fair (streaming now with a Hulu subscription) are Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash, Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson and Teyana Taylor, who play powerful divorce attorneys. So what has the critics calling it “the worst television drama ever made”? What’s so bad that it currently holds a 0% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes? For Angie Han of THR, it’s the failed portrayal of female empowerment, the stiff and affectless script, and the fact that when you put Kardashian next to better actors, her weaknesses are all the more obvious. Han continues:
Any actual emotional resonance or narrative coherence that All’s Fair manages along the way is purely incidental. Really, the show is here to serve fierce looks, bitchy one-liners and big juicy moments, with severely mixed results. … These characters are so thin, their storylines so flimsy and their motives so underbaked that there’s no recognizable emotion underlying any of it, and thus no feeling to be provoked by watching it.
Lucy Mangan of The Guardian gives the series so far 0 stars out of 5, calling it “fascinatingly, incomprehensibly, existentially terrible” with a misguided concept of female empowerment, the “worst kissing scenes ever on screen,” and a cast where no one seems to know what they’re doing. Mangan continues:
Beyond the embarrassment of the script, there is the embarrassment of the performances; although I take the point that when someone – in this case, Murphy stalwart Sarah Paulson as psychopathic rival ‘lady’ lawyer Carrington – is required to scream ‘Are you calling me an ugly duckling? So what if I give myself home perms? It’s economical!’, while smashing up her mentor’s office, they are probably not going to be able to give their best.
Alison Herman of Variety points out that in a show that claims to be about female empowerment, only Episode 2 includes a major credit by a female creative — and it’s shared between executive producer Jamie Pachino and co-creator Ryan Murphy. Even with an interesting cast of guest stars, the writers can’t resist humiliating the female characters. Herman concludes:
All’s Fair is a clumsy, condescending take on rah-rah girlboss feminism, half-baked even by the standards of an overextended Murphy. It’s true that the tone is intentionally camp-adjacent, and if one squints they could discern the vague outlines of a parody. But that’s little consolation when All’s Fair demonstrates such a low opinion of its own viewers, assuming we’ll bark like seals when fed disconnected scraps of sassy one-liners, flashy outfits and men-ain’t-shit commiseration.
Ben Dowell of The Times UK also says the show is not as feminist as it thinks it is. The clunky, clichéd writing, the brand name-dropping and “tawdry materialism” make for what Dowell says “may well be the worst television drama ever made.” The critic gives it 0 stars out of 5 and says:
All’s Fair is so bad, it’s not even enjoyably so. It thinks it’s a feminist fable about spirited lawyers getting their own back on cruel rich men but is in fact a tacky and revolting monument to the same greed, vanity and avarice it supposedly targets. … It’s so steeped in its noxiously dumb stream of feminist sloganising, and our heroines are so dreadful, that it sometimes feels as if it doesn’t even like women very much.
Emily Maddick of Glamour writes that All’s Fair lacks emotion and charm, despite it’s quick pacing and dramatic reveals. It feels “Kardashian-ified,” as if it’s telling us we should aspire to behave like billionaires. Maddick’s review says:
In All’s Fair, what should be camp feels flat, and what is trying to be outrageous and fun actually feels hollow and empty. The lifestyles of our heroines – the divorce attorneys Allura, Liberty Ronson and Emerald Greene – are splurged all over the screen in those slo-mo, drawn-out, amped up shots that have become the trademark of all such reality shows from The Kardashians to Selling Sunset through to any of The Real Housewives franchises.
Well, it’s pretty obvious that All’s Fair is not a hit with the critics. As of this writing, the general audience is giving it a much more generous 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it seems that some are finding enjoyment in all of the ridiculousness.
If you want to take a gander at Kim Kardashian’s first leading role, the first three episodes of All’s Fair can be streamed now on Hulu, with one episode dropping each Tuesday through its 10-episode run.
