Netflix has had a long run of bad TV shows, but “Hard Cell” gave me hope. All of my hope was crushed within the first five minutes. The show came out on April 12 and followed annoying characters in an all-women’s jail as they try to put on a musical, but run into problems at every turn. Confusing, stupid and full of sixth grade humor, I hated every minute of this horrid show. 

The trailer and description never said how many roles Catherine Tate would play, which was confusing enough. To see so many people all played by the same actress for no apparent reason confused me in the beginning, but that wasn’t the thing that fueled my cloud of fury. 

First of all, the show was full of offensive jokes. Ros (Catherine Tate), an inmate with terrible mommy issues, takes advantage of her stereotypically-written Black boyfriend by catfishing him, then draining him of all the money he has. They talked about him like he was an object or a means to make money, and his character felt like it was written by a British man in colonial times. Another terrible, offensive and borderline creepy character was Gary (Peter Singh), who wouldn’t take no for an answer and continued to creep up on the director of the musical, Cheryl (Cheryl Fergison).

Also, the show just wasn’t funny. My sisters were walking in and out of the living room while I was watching this show and all they did was look at it in disgust. One out of 20 jokes landed — I know that because I counted. It took 20 different attempts, (or at least what I assumed were attempts) before I smiled. Also, the majority of the jokes in the first three episodes related to the poor hygiene the prisoners had due to a plumbing issue. 

I could barely sit through this, praying the end would at least make sense, but it did the opposite. The few consistent things throughout the show seemed to be crumpled into a ball and thrown into a trash can that then caught on fire, which would be a perfect place to put my memories of watching this show.

While you could certainly watch this if you’re being punished, “Hard Cell” isn’t good for anything else. I don’t know who hurt Catherine Tate, the creator and actress playing six out of the 16 characters, but this show could not have been intended to make people laugh. This show kept me prisoner to terrible attempts at comedy and deserves to land in the prison it seems to glorify.