For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.
I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don’t think he was ever funny not even a little.
His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it’s so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.
Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.
You forgot the Deus Ex Machina explanation at the end that made literally everything before it a non sequitur.
And he had no new ideas. Anyone that reads that series and extolls the originality of the Dark Forest theory hasn’t read any science fiction to speak of, let along Saberhagen’s Berserker series from the better part of a century earlier. He had nothing new, he was a literature prof writing his first SF book and doing it way worse than any literature prof should ever be at writing.
Fucking garbage, I was angry and upset that I had wasted time reading that shit and wanted my money back. If anyone tells you that was great SF, you can safely turn your back and walk away, they have nothing useful to contribute to a conversation on the matter.