10 Amazing TV Shows (With Terrible Lead Characters)
Should've just gotten in the god damn robot, Shinji.
TV shows are built on characters. While a movie can certainly get away with the characters not being that interesting, since you're only stuck with them for two and a half hours at most, a TV show asks quite a bit more of a time commitment from its audience. As such, we had better like the people we're stuck with.
What makes a likeable lead character is one of the most subjective things on the planet, since it often reflects back on the personal biases and experiences of the person giving the opinion. But every now and then you'll find an anomaly, a show that most people love...with a protagonist that NO ONE loves.
Lead characters have to carry and push the plot of the story forward, while staying likeable at the same time. That's a hell of a tightrope act, and not every character walks it without falling and breaking their necks.
Whether because they're required to be jerks in order to justify the story not ending yet, or because they just weren't that well written to begin with compared to their co-stars, these great TV shows managed to still be great, even when hamstrung by genuinely AWFUL main characters.
10. Arrow
Arrow as a whole did not get off to an appealing start. While it would find its footing as it went on, pretty much all of its problems can be summed up in how it portrayed Oliver Queen.
The problem with this version of Oliver Queen is that he ISN'T Oliver Queen. From front to back, you can tell the writers of this show really just wanted to make a Batman show. So when they couldn't do that, they decided to forcibly cram Oliver into a Batman mould.
Gone were Oliver's liberal politics and aesthetic of "guy who is a billionaire, but would take a guillotine to every single billionaire on the planet if he could get away with it" in favour of Green Arrow just being yet another dark brooding avenger of the night using the cover of a playboy rich kid.
As the show progressed and the writers got over themselves, Oliver would more closely resemble the version from the comics, which ultimately redeemed it enough to place it at the bottom of this list. But the fact that Oliver didn't even call himself Green Arrow for over three seasons still deserves mockery.