The series Arrested Development finds its characters, particularly Michael Bluth, constantly having brief opportunities at success yanked away from them. Oftentimes, it will be the culmination of the decisions of everyone in the house working against each other to completely void any progress they may have made. The mildly likable Michael Bluth often finds that as soon as he himself is willing to be the slightest bit lax in his principles he is karmically punished, as when he condemns his family for spending their shares of company stock only to have it immediately revealed that he has used his shares to buy a new car (though, in all fairness, a car is way more useful than a boat and gaybar in a terrifying neighborhood).
A.N.T. Farm. While the main character isn't too bad, everyone else is either an inconsiderate jerk or a complete idiot.
Black Books is nothing more than an embittered Irish drunk taking out his anger and frustration on the world, usually in the form of Manny. It's good.
The Brit ComBottom (as well as its spiritual predecessor The Young Ones) exists entirely so the audience can watch two only-slightly-sympathetic Loser Protagonists sharing an apartment, arguing, dreaming up Zany Schemes that inevitably fail, beating the hell out of each other, and suffering fatal injuries at least once every three episodes. Edmondson, Mayall, and Planer also joined forces for Filthy Rich & Catflap. This sort of show is really Edmondson and Mayall's specialty.
The purpose of Cheaters is to be a private investigator service for people who think their significant other is being unfaithful. Except without the "private" portion. If the SO is indeed cheating, you don't have to pay any fees for hiring the show, but you are expected to confront them and the Other (Wo)Man in public with the host and camera crew trailing behind like Ambulance Chasers, getting in the broken-hearted peoples' faces and asking, "How do you feel?" Never once have they shown an investigation that exonerated the SO or had a happy ending. Is it any wonder the host was once stabbed on-camera by an enraged man?
Dinner: Impossible could be fairly accurately summarized as "Food Network tries to kill Robert Irvine." Restaurant: Impossible allows him to spread the suffering around a bit more. That said, he enjoys the sadism a bit as he doesn't perform so well in other shows.
From the same network, a lot of the "Food Network Specials" basically consist of the audience waiting for the cake to fall over.
Or shows like Chopped and Cupcake Wars which is a stage-by-stage elimination show where 3 out of 4 chefs' dreams gets crushed one chef at a time.
Hell's Kitchen, getting eliminated early there is practically suicide for your career in the culinary field, you will be stuck working for slave wages after this at a low-quality dining place if you were eliminated early.
And then there's Cutthroat Kitchen, which is a show about a cooking competition where chefs strategically screw each other over.
... where sabotage is not only encouraged, it's for sale!
Much of the appeal of Dirty Jobs is seeing Mike Rowe get absolutely filthy and try (and mostly fail) to perform tasks that would make most people cringe while his hosts (who do this for a living) look on with amusement. One of the most popular episodes involves Mike getting bitten by snakes. Multiple times.
Everybody Loves Raymond, to some extent. There are no more than token efforts to solve the Dysfunction Junction situation. Ray is a wuss when it comes to standing up to his wife and mother, although he does get better at this in the later seasons; Frank is an insensitive Jerkass; Deborah is a mean, overly angry housewife; Robert is a self-loathing whiner who expresses Wangst despite the fact that he's in his forties; and Marie is simply the personification of the devil who uses guilt to get what she wants in addition to being meddlesome.
Extremely common in British sitcoms, especially those which follow a "Fawlty Towers" Plot format. Fawlty Towers itself features an incredibly unpleasant hotel owner who is astonishingly rude to his staff and guests. Whilst Basil himself is a deeply unpleasant man, and he deserves everything he gets, the cruel ways in which his lies fall apart can be particularly indulgent to watch. Additionally, his wife and several of his guests are portrayed as almost as unpleasant as he is, and even more sadistic. Basil and Sybil's marriage could be a Sadist Show all on its own.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is this trope in spades. The main cast of five has virtually no redeeming qualities and their attempts to improve anything always makes it worse. Sweet Dee was originally conceived as the voice of reason, but very quickly lost that aspect of her character and is now just as horrible as the rest of them.
Lexx is another World Half Empty example. The characters are less than sympathetic, and while you'd kinda root for them at first, by the third season you'd wish they died in the pilot, for the entire Universe's sake. The third season tries to redeem them, but some even consider blowing up Heaven and Hell planets to deserve them the fate above. The fourth season goes to Earth, which doesn't have that much luck or sympathy either, and is destroyed chunk by chunk until it is blown up and between the survivors manage to wind up President Buffoon, the Mad Scientist partly responsible for Earth's destruction (and his Fangirls), and of course, the devil himself.
The series is wall-to-wall power struggles and emotional warfare. The rule on that show is that whatever makes the characters (especially Malcolm) the most miserable is what will happen. The episode "Company Picnic: Part 2" has Francis's subplot ending with Francis dragged naked behind a Zamboni on a skating rink (after trying to stop getting deeper in debt to his evil employer), while Malcolm's subplot ends with him being insulted, a lot, by a girl, having a crying jag and drying his tears with poison oak.
There was an in-universe example of this as well... In one episode, Francis babysits his brothers and sets up a "contest" to see which brother loves him most by doing random tasks for him. This quickly devolves into a brawl, and Francis briefly cuts in, saying something to the effect of "Whoa, whoa. This was supposed to be about love, and you've turned it into something ugly! ...Carry on." He then sits down with a drink and watches his brothers fighting, saying "This, too, pleases me."
Married... with Children. What redeeming moments the characters had were very few and far between, and such moments were almost always the exclusive purview of Al and to a lesser extent Bud.
Although largely downplayed, the entire premise behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 is that a man is stranded in space by a couple of mad scientists and forced to watch bad movies until he goes insane. The whole thing is played for laughs of course, but some of the movies are truly punishing.
The humor in the BBC TV series The Office (UK) and Extras comes from the continual humiliation of the main characters, especially the second series of Extras. The US adaptation will occasionally flirt with this, but seldom rely on it. The same goes for The IT Crowd, often in a big way.
Averted for the first season, which had a more suspenseful tone, with the victims being killed by the negligence of another person.
Ooh La La Couple, a 2012 Korean Drama, constantly has its characters in awkwardly funny situations that should generally be serious and heartbreaking, but are juxtaposed to hilarious reactions.
Peep Show is another Brit Com to fit this trope, a cringingly awkward black comedy following, once again, two only-slightly-sympathetic Loser Protagonists as they ruin their own chances in life and love.
Queen for a Day is a show in which five female contestants describe in excruciating detail their horrible Real Life problems (such as deaths in the family, cancer, job loss, poverty, homelessness, even mental illness) in order to win prizes, the host often doing some jokes to avoid things from getting sour, with the only result often being that the audience had no chance but laugh at their predicaments. When the winner was announced, the other contestants have ushered off the stage and were given nothing, not even bus fare home.note (From the viewer's standpoint, anyway. The losers actually did get a small consolation prize, such as a toaster oven or camera, but this was never mentioned on-air to avoid getting liars as contestants.) This passed for family entertainment for twenty years on American TV.
Seinfeld was practically built around this idea. "No hugging, no learning" was the mantra in the show's formative years.
Strike It Rich: The contestants that did not win were given nothing, often having to rely on charities (although viewers were urged to call a hotline if they desired to help them). An issue of TV Guide called it "a despicable travesty on the very nature of charity.", which came out as very strong criticism at the time. The late 1950s game show It Could Be You, in which women were prized for embarrassing situations and were given comically useless gifts, was basically a jab at the show.
The Thick of It is a relentlessly cynical, sadistic show about dirty cowards and a near Villain Protagonist. The characters who aren't self-serving and malicious are hideously incompetent, and they all inhabit a realm where idealism goes to die.
Wizards of Waverly Place: Not only do wizards have to give up their powers and fight their siblings to be the only one in the family to keep them forever, but even Alex, Justin and Max Russo, the main trio of siblings in the show, have been shown to be sadiststhemselves who will joke about killing someone for holding a revolution to make sure no wizard ever has to give up their powers and consider them "evil" for doing it.note See "The Good, The Bad, and The Alex", where Justin considers Alex to be evil after she joins Stevie Nichols in her revolution to make sure no one ever has to give up their powers, but then Alex freezes Stevie before Max can take a picture for their revolutionary flag and Max knocks her over, shattering into pieces next to her brother, who's unconscious after touching the power transmitter, which gave him a "Full Wizard" cap and tie and Alex reveals that she was just playing along with Stevie to gain her trust and remarks, "That's a nice brother-sister moment," making fun of Stevie shattered into pieces of ice next to Warren, who's unconscious.
