Elisabeth Moss’ sourpuss close-ups have become self-parody.

By Jack Pooley /

April 5, 2023

No TV show is perfect – with the sheer number of moving parts that go into any series, it’s simply not possible for everything to go totally smoothly on even the greatest show.

But sometimes there’s one issue above all others that just riles the audience up, and like a dog with a bone, they can’t let go of it until the showrunners agree to fix it – hopefully, anyway.

These 10 TV shows have all been major critical and/or ratings hits for their respective networks, in spite of one nagging flaw that most fans would love to see them get rid of ASAP.

From shows about to wrap up their run with their next season to those that are just getting started, these 10 series would all do well to ditch these much-maligned elements and make everyone watching considerably happier.

In some cases fans have been complaining about these gripes for literally years at this point, and in extreme cases it’s even caused some viewers to stop watching altogether, so the creatives would be smart to listen to the vocal feedback. Here’s hoping, anyway…

10. The Skewed Aspect Ratio – The Sandman

Netflix’s The Sandman was widely praised for faithfully adapting Neil Gaiman’s legendary comic book to the small screen, and as great as it was – for the first half of the series, anyway – many took issue with a bizarre stylistic choice throughout.

For many of the show’s more surreal sequences, the aspect ratio was skewed, with the image being compressed to make any character on screen look weirdly elongated.

Though some viewers initially assumed this was a technical error on Netflix’s part, Variety reported that it was indeed an intentional stylistic choice, to give the more heightened scenes a uniquely otherworldly, disconcerting feel.

But considering that many found it to be more of a distraction than a transporting stylistic conceit, the filmmakers might be best advised to ditch it, or at least severely scale-back its use, for the second season, which is expected to shoot this summer.

Simply, if a stylish trick has people confused over whether it was a mistake or not, it’s probably not worth doing.