Serials with bad reputation that are actually entertaining?

Some of them aren’t that bad, really.

The Gunfighters has a poor reputation because Peter Haining (I think) noted that it had the poorest ratings (to date - he wrote about it in the 80s) so it must be a terrible story. That became the received fan wisdom for many years until somebody actually went and watched it and realised that it’s pretty good.

The Time Monster features some dodgy costuming for the monster, but in a universe that contains the Myrka and the Absorbaloff, that isn’t a huge crime. I watched it with my wife a few years back (she is a fan only by association) and we both had a lot of fun with it.

Underworld is an old favourite of mine but it is An Unearthly Child all over again: a wonderful first episode followed by 3 episodes of very slow story. The CSO also looks terrible which doesn’t help its reputation. But it’s a brave SFX experiment.

The Awakening is great fun.

Paradise Towers is far too brightly lit and the final episode features the worst performance by Richard Briers across his entire career, but it is pretty solid.

I love Delta And The Bannermen (I wanted Ray to replace Sarah Jane for SJA in an episode entitled From Bannermen To Bannerman) but it has some pacing issues.

Nimon is loads of fun but it looks just awful: it’s clear that the money had run out for set design, but the story is clever enough to overcome it. There are a mix of competent and dreadful performances in it, and I’m not even thinking about Graham Crowden. It feels amateurish and is the main reason why I think Shada would have been terrible had it been completed.

I’ve always justified the time monster costume (to myself) as this is how limited human perception sees a pan dimensional being …