6. Small Wonder (Syndication, 1985 1989)
Whats It About? An inventor develops a robot called Vicki that has the appearance and mind of a ten year old girl and makes it a part his family in an attempt to see if it can learn human values.
Why Is It So Ridiculous? On the surface this is just another god-awful 80s sitcom with bad acting (especially from the child actors) and forced dialogue. But the entire conceit of a generic family living with a robot is just daft. It worked with Kryten in Red Dwarf as it was set in the far future. This is 1980s suburbia yet features a man creating a robot so lifelike that it fools everyone into thinking its a real child. Aside from that, theres the running story of preventing people from finding out that Vicki is actually a robot. If I had just created a fully functioning robot, I would be shouting it from the rooftops. The idea of a robot trying to be more human has been shown to work in the past but its putting in such an ill-fitting setting that makes it so stupid.
What Happened To It? It ran for four seasons before being cancelled with the actress playing Vickis increased age being explained through her creator giving her an upgrade in Season Three.