1%-5% of your purchase will help support the PTC.

Worst TV Show of the Week Brought to you by the Parents Television Council	Share |
WARNING: Graphic Content!!! Do NOT push play if you don't want to see the explicit video!!!

Harper’s Island on CBS

CBS has billed the self-contained, limited-run murder/mystery Harper’s Island (Thursdays, 10:00 p.m. ET) as a television “event.”  What’s so momentous about it?  Every week the show promises to kick someone off of the island in the bloodiest, most gruesome ways imaginable.  Survivor meets Saw.  Since CBS is revelling in the macabre, Harper’s Island rightfully deserves the title Worst TV Show of the Week.    

The basic premise of the show assumes that a young vibrant couple would decide to have their destination wedding at a dreary island in the Pacific Northwest where several heinous murders had occurred seven years ago.  How romantic.  Not only that, as the bodies pile up and their guests suddenly go missing, the couple continue their inane week-long wedding festivities.  The cast of characters is so extensive, the plot so thin, and the premise so utterly ridiculous it is not even worth providing readers with a synopsis of the episode.  After all, this show is really only about the body count -- as the show’s website attests.  CBS is sponsoring a “Harper’s Island Pick the Victim Game” where contestants can win $1,000 for correctly identifying who will be slaughtered next. 

The April 16^th broadcast was only the second episode, and already five ancillary characters have bit the dust in horrible fashion.  The latest show featured the town priest walking through the woods near the chapel and stepping into a booby trap.  As he dangles upside down from a tree an unseen assailant hurls a blade and lops the poor father’s head off.  Later in the episode a disturbed young woman is found hung from the rafters in her home with a noose around her neck.  The episode finally ends with a vacuous socialite chasing her dog into the woods under the dark of night.  Predictably, this does not turn out well.  The woman falls into a pit.  Her tormentor soaks her in gasoline and sets her on fire.  She wails in horrendous pain as the credits roll.

If you happen to miss any of the carnage, the show’s website allows viewers to witness each and every gore-soaked murder – from a man hacked to pieces by a boat’s propeller blade, to the groom’s uncle severed in half, his entrails dangling from his torso. 

CBS is experimenting with a new broadcasting model, hoping that a definitive 13-episode run will lure viewers, and that bite-sized, readily-accessible online content will keep them engaged.  Unfortunately, the network is offering more of the same senseless, hyper-stylized violence that is drowning the airwaves and legitimate internet media sites.  Judging by the sagging ratings (viewership was down significantly after its premiere episode), the characters aren’t the only ones leaving the island.  This sets up an interesting predicament for CBS.  If ratings continue to slide will CBS stop the carnage, both figuratively and literally?  Hopefully, they will.

For graphic violent content Harper’s Island has been named Worst TV Show of the Week.