10 TV Shows That Actually Benefited From Bad Acting

William Shatner's indelible performance as Star Trek's original Captain Kirk is iconic for many reasons, one being a certain Family Guy parody which introduced a whole new generation to his deliriously hammy work on The Original Series.

Shatner's time on Trek was defined by his larger-than-life turn in front of the camera, or if we want to be blunt, his blatant overacting.

Shatner left no piece of scenery unchewed throughout the series, his energy shifting unpredictably within scenes while also taking odd, unnatural pauses during dialogue.

Throw in his restless movements and hand gestures and it's clear that Shatner was always playing for the cheap seats, somewhat fitting given that he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor.

While most theatre actors rein in their projection for the small screen, Shatner continued to go big. In a different project it wouldn't necessarily work, yet in something as heightened as Star Trek it absolutely did, in large part because of Shatner's charming, unrelenting commitment.

Even in the weakest Trek episode, it was worth tuning in just to see Shatner's idiosyncratic line readings and wild gesticulations.

Though Mad Men boasted one of the most immaculate ensemble casts in the history of television, there was one sure outlier among the pack in January Jones, who portrayed Don Draper's (Jon Hamm) distant wife Betty.

Despite receiving Golden Globe and SAG nominations for her performance on the show, Jones is generally accepted among the fanbase to be the weakest link, trailing the rest of the main cast by a large margin.

And yet, Jones' icy lack of affect throughout the series, defined by a wooden delivery that borders on robotic at times, is ultimately absolutely perfect for the role of a dissatisfied 1960s housewife.

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner clearly appreciated that Jones' stiff performance would be perfect for the part of the repressed, shallow Betty, though Jones' post-Mad Men work - including a shambolic performance in X-Men: First Class - hasn't exactly shown much improvement.

While a better actress might've strove to add more life and dimensionality to Betty, Jones' surface-level work was unintentionally quite brilliant in its own way.

David Lynch's Twin Peaks certainly boasted its fair share of excellent acting - most notably from Kyle MacLachlan, Ray Wise, Sheryl Lee, and Grace Zabriskie - but also some performances that, to be blunt, were ultimately quite laughable.

By far the two biggest culprits are James Marshall and Lara Flynn Boyle, who play young lovers James Hurley and Donna Hayward.

In Marshall's case it doesn't help that James is held by many fans to be the show's worst character - a corny, boring mope whose irritation is only elevated by pairing him with the obnoxious Donna, a hellish match if there ever was one.

This all culminates in James' infamously, hilariously wretched rendition of the soft ballad "Just You" for Donna and Maddy Ferguson (Lee), which over 30 years later remains perhaps the show's single-most ridiculed moment.

Yet David Lynch is as exacting as filmmakers come and knew precisely what he was doing here.

Lynch has never been particularly interested in "realism," and with Twin Peaks existing as both an homage to and example of soap opera, he clearly leaned into the off-key, overwrought performances of his cast at every moment.

Marshall and Boyle certainly aren't the only wonky actors among the huge ensemble, but their hyper-dramatic work feels most perfectly attuned to the campy vibe Lynch was shooting for.

It only enhances the feeling that this sleepy town and the people within it are very, very off.

Aziz Ansari's dramedy series Master of None has been widely celebrated for its phenomenally perceptive writing, superbly sharp direction, and marvelous performances, though one of its major triumphs was a bit of a happy accident.

Protagonist Dev Shah's (Ansari) Indian immigrant parents make a few memorable appearances throughout the show, and best of all, they're played by Ansari's real-life parents, Shoukath and Fatima Ansari.

Yet the pair are not professional actors in any way, and it absolutely shows throughout their scenes - there's an untrained awkwardness to their delivery that makes it clear they're reading lines rather than speaking from the heart.

And yet, there's a charm to that clumsiness which only makes their on-screen interactions with their real-life son that much more funny and poignant.

That stilted quality makes them feel like real parents genuinely trying to have heartfelt conversations with their son, but being of their age and repressed temperaments, they struggle to get the words out.

Taylor Schilling is a totally solid actress, and yet her performance as protagonist Piper Chapman in Netflix's hit prison drama Orange Is the New Black has received wildly mixed responses ever since the show's premiere.

There was much outcry after Schilling scored a Lead Actress Emmy nod for her work on the first season, many feeling that not only was Piper the most boring member of the series' massive ensemble, but that by extension Schilling's performance was nothing to write home about.

In Schilling's defense Piper isn't a particularly interesting character, though the actress plays her as so obnoxious as to erode almost all sympathy for her altogether.

With so many wonderful actors in the ensemble bringing life to excellent characters - Samira Wiley, Kate Mulgrew, Uzo Aduba, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, Lea DeLaria, and Yael Stone, to name just a few - Schilling's work seems positively bland by comparison.

Evidently the show's creator Jenji Kohan herself realised this, as subsequent seasons edged away from Piper's story to rove around the infinitely more compelling supporting cast, which was ultimately an incredibly smart move to ensure the show's longevity.

Had Kohan kept the focus on Piper and Schilling, it's tough to imagine Orange sticking it out for seven seasons.

ABC's hit fantasy series Once Upon a Time was a frothy good time both despite of and because it was full of questionable acting.

Beyond the genuinely brilliant, show-stealing performances from Robert Carlyle as Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin and Lana Parrilla as the Evil Queen/Regina Mills, the majority of the cast were firmly in phoning-it-in territory, admittedly working with writing that could be politely called "not great."

One takes no pleasure in singling out a child actor, but Jared S. Gilmore's performance as the interminably annoying Henry Mills caught a lot of flak in earlier seasons, even if he's simply the worst of an ensemble that's totally all over the place.

And yet, the lack of consistency between the performances, with actors swinging for so many disparate tones, only enhanced the show's already pronounced guilty pleasure quality.

It's basically a community theatre production with a budget, a chintzy fairytale underlined by the utter flailing skittishness of the ensemble cast.

It's not good acting, but it's way more fun to watch than a more "serious," self-regarding version of the show would've been.

Netflix's prematurely-cancelled Altered Carbon might be the textbook example of a style-over-substance TV show: beautifully shot, thematically rich, and yet ultimately failing to realise the full potential of its ambition.

One of the chief complaints among critics and viewers alike was the mediocre performances from the show's leads - Joel Kinnaman in the first season and Anthony Mackie in the second.

Both Kinnaman and Mackie are talented actors, no question, and yet as the "re-sleeved" host bodies for protagonist Takeshi Kovacs (Will Yun Lee), each resolutely failed to convince.

Kinnaman's hard-boiled take on Kovacs aimed for brooding but ended up feeling dull and wooden, and though Mackie's subsequent portrayal felt more alive, it wasn't remotely consistent with the character we were introduced to previously.

And yet, this disconnect between the two performances ends up unintentionally playing into the show's central theme of identity - the notion that a guy being constantly swapped into different sleeves might seem inconsistent and off-kilter totally works.

It's just a shame Netflix cancelled the show before season three, which would've most likely featured Will Yun Lee as the "Prime" Kovacs and basically reconciled the three performances into one.

Throughout the mid-2000s, Prison Break was one of the most talked about TV shows on the planet, a deliciously ridiculous, fiendishly addictive prison drama about a man, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller), attempting to break his brother, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), out of prison before he's executed for a crime he didn't commit.

While there are a number of genuinely strong performances on the show - namely William Fichtner, Peter Stormare, Robert Knepper, and Wade Williams - the two leading roles are played by Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell with a stoic reserve bordering on self-parody.

Despite the immense turmoil the brothers experience throughout, Miller and Purcell both underplay their parts to the point that it's easy to call them cardboard.

By any measure their work renders the show's two most important characters weirdly boring at times, and much like fellow prison show Orange Is the New Black, the wider ensemble cast ended up surpassing them in popularity.

Yet there is something to be said for their blank slate acting technique: for starters, it provides an entertaining contrast to the bigger performances of their fellow prisoners, and also feels rather in step with the show's shamelessly trashy vibe.

A little more emoting wouldn't have hurt either actor, but hearing Miller unveil the next step of his wildly convoluted plan with a steely dramatic whisper was nothing if not highly amusing.

Netflix's Squid Game was the undeniable surprise TV hit of last year, becoming the streamer's most-watched series ever and going on to win Golden Globe and SAG awards for the performances of its cast.

Yet as wonderful as the ensemble's performances are, there is one aspect of the show that made a lot of fans turn their noses up - those damn VIPs.

In the show's seventh episode, we're introduced to a group of American VIPs who are wagering on the games, and many viewers noted the strangely stilted quality of the masked actors' performances, some even citing it as an example of distractingly bad acting.

And while it was suggested that this was simply a result of the language barrier between the American cast members and Korean crew, it's also been claimed that the disjointed performances were entirely intentional, to create an intentional disconnect between them and the rest of the cast.

Whether intended or not, the off-base performances are certainly effective in portraying the VIPs as stereotypically coarse, bone-headed American "tourists" - an amusing reversal of American media's tendency to portray Asian characters amid broad stereotypes.

If the hammy acting makes the gross VIPs more offputting, then all the better.

There's perhaps no greater guilty pleasure show still airing today than Riverdale, a slick and self-consciously trashy reimagining of the classic Archie Comics series.

The show has gone down some increasingly silly rabbit-holes in recent years, with many fans believing its quality has declined severely, noting the chaotically inconsistent writing of the series' beloved main characters.

Look, Riverdale was never going to be winning Emmy awards for its acting, and though the older cast members largely get away with their dignity in tact, the teens are all over the place, especially KJ Apa as Archie, Camila Mendes as Veronica, and Cole Sprouse as Jughead.

While they're absolutely at the mercy of the show's roughshod scripts, of the main teens the only actress to emerge relatively unscathed is Lili Reinhart, whereas the quality of the others' work varies wildly from scene to scene.

Yet given Riverdale's unapologetic penchant for slushy melodrama, basically styled as a teen riff on Twin Peaks as it is, the wonky acting helps elevate that vibe into the stratosphere, where the audience is simply having fun laughing at the heightened absurdity of it all.

Seemingly well aware of this fact, Cole Sprouse himself hilariously compared the ensemble cast to a wax museum a few years ago.