10 Greatest TV Anti-Heroes
There was once a time in TV land when a TV series' protagonist had to be a good-guy. If the audience didn't like the lead character, if the audience couldn't connect to the lead character, or if that character was morally ambiguous in any way, TV executives for the most part thought the show would fail. TV characters were supposed to represent who you wanted to be, and the lifestyle that you should aspire towards.
Thankfully, that time is more or less over in Hollywood, and anti-heroes pretty much rule the roost. TV creators love to push the boundaries of what a TV protagonist is capable of... murder, attempted murder, poisoning, adultly, backstabbing and drug dealing... main characters these days do them all, in fact, they'd be somewhat boring if they didn't. This list celebrates what I consider to be the ten best examples of anti-heroes we hate to love or love to hate in modern television for a variety of different television genres. Whether you like it or not, anti-heroes are here to stay, and if you are still unconvinced and miss the good old days when TV characters were saints, then let these ten persuade you to come over to the dark side with the rest of us...10. "Angel/ Angelus" Angel/Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Pretty much the definition of an anti-hero, though Angel spends most of his time as the good guy tortured soul everyone loves to love, for a lot of episodes he is literally the mass murdering, friend killing, baddest vampire of them all, Angelus. One of the earliest examples of an anti-hero on this list, you may consider this a low place for one of TV's most iconic anti-heroes of all time. The reason for this position at the bottom of the list is that whilst Angel has a mass murdering past, in his true form, with his soul, Angel is mostly the sweetest, purely good, superhero character we all would normally expect from our TV protagonists. OK, so there were a few times when even souled he did some very morally questionable things, like locking key members of Wolfram and Hart in a room for vampires Darla and Drusilla to feast upon (a turning point for the character), but most of the time we love loving Angel, and he makes it so easy for us. He even sacrifices his happiness and denies spending his life as a human with Buffy (I Will Remember You) to continue life in the darkness, eating tasteless foods and drinking pigs blood, so that he can protect Buffy from harm. He is a sweetheart really. He deserved this place on the list because David Boreanaz is so good in the role. In Season 1 of Buffy he may have been all R Patz... but in Season 2 as Angelus he was on an entirely different level. Brilliantly evil, he played arguably the most interesting character in Buffy, one of TV's greatest drama's, on arguably it's best ever season.