As a reviewer, I believe star ratings are an insult to the public

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

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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.

I’ve written a whole book myself about star ratings and consumer reviews (called Rate This Book and currently rated 4.4 stars on Amazon) and my conclusion is that star ratings – everyone reading them and giving them for everything from the new series of Slow Horses to your experience in an airport toilet – have taken over the........

© The Sydney Morning Herald