The most skin-crawling, gut-squelching, teeth-grinding shovel full of TV ordure I have ever seen: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS gives Kim Kardashian’s legal drama All’s Fair MINUS three stars

According to Kim Kardashian, bad publicity is the best publicity. The more insulting, hurtful and degrading he is, the better it will be for his career.

This was, after all, the woman who sold friends’ old clothes on eBay for kickbacks until she rose to fame in 2007 with a sex tape allegedly sold by her own mother (who eventually denied the claim).

Who has become the most talked about celebrity in the world, but no one can say why. What we know for sure in the wake of All’s Fair, the new Disney+ series about ultra-rich divorce lawyers, is that he’s not famous for his talent as an actor.

All’s Fair has received some of the most venomous criticism ever for a TV series, from critics and viewers alike. The Atlantic magazine calls this ‘atrocity’, a word often used for war crimes and terrorist attacks. US online news outlet The Wrap described the series as ‘the most transparently awful programme’.

Los Angeles Times said: ‘All’s Fair is turning into a bleak final season of And Just Like That [the Sex And The City spin-off] He looks like Chekhov.”

Here The Times described the film as ‘perhaps the worst drama ever’. ‘Fascinating, incomprehensible and existentially terrifying,’ said the Guardian.

Rotten Tomatoes, the compendium of online reviews, initially gave it a zero percent rating, but that has now risen to a reluctant 6 percent.

What about the result? Fantastic ratings with everyone watching to see if it will really be as bad as promised.

Kim gleefully asked her 354 million Instagram followers: ‘Have you watched the hit show of the year!?!?!?’ – before adding data showing that All’s Fair is the most-watched title on Disney+ in the US and 27 countries around the world.

When you look at numbers like that it really can’t be that bad… right?

Oh yes. No matter how awful you’re expecting, the first three episodes currently available for streaming are much, much worse than this.

Kim plays Allura Grant, a spoiled young lawyer who teams up with her friends Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts) and Emerald Greene (Niecy Nash) to spearhead a feminist law firm specializing in a lucrative field that stupid old male lawyers never bother to exploit; It helps unhappy wives negotiate divorce settlements that bleed their billionaire husbands dry.

A typical case story: A beautiful waitress with dreams of stardom but low self-esteem agrees to marry a sleazy tech company boss. She realizes too late that she is a lesbian, but she is locked in a brutal prenuptial agreement.

If he goes out, he leaves with nothing. But she can’t bear to stay: ‘Lionel has tendencies… sexual fantasies.’

Allura knows how to win this one. She sends Emerald and her zoom-lens camera to follow this perverted weirdo to his favorite sex dungeon. Three lawyers enter this dominion chamber and confront the lady wearing red gloves and sitting on a leather throne.

Allura offers her $10 million for incriminating photos of Lechy Lionel. He attempted a showdown with his legal team. They grimace when shown a picture of a traffic cone-sized sex toy, and 30 seconds later Allura and the girls are opening a bottle of champagne they call Victory Fizz.

This story has to be the most skin-chilling, toe-twisting, teeth-gnashing, gut-silencing shovelful of TV dreck I’ve ever dumped on my desk; But it’s not even the worst part of the pilot episode.

Even more disgusting is the scene in which a rival lawyer and former colleague (Carrington Lane, played by Sarah Paulson) sends Allura a bouquet of lollipops ‘lightly coated in salmonella and feces’.

Carrington is upset that she wasn’t invited to the law firm that attacked the other girls’ husbands. But how could they trust him? He used to steal Allura’s lunch from the refrigerator at work, and any lawyer who did something like that deserves to be fired.

Allura can laugh it off with stinky lollipops. He certainly doesn’t intend to sue Carrington for ‘exposure to hazardous substances’ or anything like that because it is well known that American lawyers almost never sue for any reason.

Instead, he drives his Bentley convertible to his home in the Hollywood Hills; Here a servant opens the door and another takes his coat. After making sure her team of chefs have prepared dinner, she heads upstairs to change and picks out an outfit from her walk-in wardrobe — and lo and behold, she also has a walk-in jewelry store.

Her husband Chase (Matthew Noszka) walks in, pretending to forget their fifth wedding anniversary – but he’s just kidding. He bought her a ring with a diamond the size of a lollipop. ‘Didn’t this belong to Elizabeth Taylor?’ he called out. ‘I have no idea who he is,’ he replies. Of course he doesn’t; Chase is a man. But he bought her jewelry, and that should always be rewarded in the most feminist way, so Allura sits on top of him at the dinner table.

But it won’t last long. It’s too successful for any man to carry. ‘I feel hopelessly, ridiculously small next to you,’ she bleated.

It’s hard to believe that talented artists like Watts and Nash could be involved. Oscar nominee Glenn Close stars as Allura’s mentor, and other notables like Pirates of the Caribbean star Jack Davenport and The Handmaid’s Tale actor OT Fagbenle are also directed by six-time Emmy winner Ryan Murphy.

Naomi Watts, in particular, will never experience a scene in which she negotiates a $40 million settlement for an unfaithful spouse in New York by hopping on a firm private jet and flying across America to inspect and appraise the woman’s jewelry collection.

With dazzling legal intelligence, Liberty announces that all these rocks belong to the wife, not the husband; So they pack them into boxes made of crocodile skin and waltz out of the house while the abandoned husband cries impotently.

And if you’re worried that two middle-aged women loaded with sparklers worth tens of millions of dollars might be a little vulnerable on the streets of New York, rest assured that Liberty is armed with sarcastic wit and isn’t afraid to use them. No robber would risk provoking his sharp mind.

Watts, star of Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams, is an acclaimed actor. So is Glenn Close, of course: The Fatal Attraction star was so scarred by All’s Fair’s attack that she posted a cartoon online showing the show’s stars boiling a floppy-eared critic for rabbit stew.

But all their star power can’t save this show or make Kim Kardashian look like she can read out loud, let alone act.

Alan Carr once said his hips ‘felt like Edam cheese’. His face is equally rubbery and expressionless, his voice droningly robotic. The problem is not just that it fails to convey emotion; I also find it impossible to believe that you know what an emotion is.

When her husband leaves her, Allura imagines donning acres of canary yellow tulle and smashing her rival’s Mercedes with a matching yellow baseball bat. She does this with a very faint smile, wearing the face of a woman who died after overdosing on pills in her sleep. Her friends reassure her that the breakup wasn’t her fault. They chorus: ‘Weak men cannot handle strong women.’

This must be why All’s Fair has such lousy reviews. Kim Kardashian is very strong. We can’t cope.