Opinion

They’re useful when choosing a hotel – but in the popular arts, star ratings are a bust.

Benji Wilson

October 31, 2026 — 5:45am

Walk past a movie poster, scour the ads for your next dose of must-see TV or hit up Goodreads for a new book, and you’ll find yourself playing the same game: you’re presented with a star rating, usually from one to five, and encouraged to base your next move upon it.

I review TV shows for a living, and part of the job is to assign each and every one a star rating. I get it – the star rating is the first thing a reader looks at, and if it leads them to read any of the words below, then great. Stars twinkle; they get attention. The star rating gets to go on the front page. It gets funnelled into Metacritic and IMDb and so on, in to a great, universal rating that, thanks to Rotten Tomatoes and the like, these days can determine the fate of a show or a book.

Star ratings are themselves overrated, says reviewer Benji Wilson.…