10 Best TV Antiheroes Of All Time
One minute you love them, the next you hate them...
When The Sopranos debuted and ushered in the Golden Age of Television we're all still feverently enjoying to this day, there was an almost audible shift in what audiences wanted to see.
No longer were people concerned with flawless, altruistic heroes; they needed their characters to have some bite, to be morally compromised, complex, imperfect and occasionally evil.
Ever since then, antiheroes have been all the rage on the small screen, which is now populated with an endless stream of murderous mob bosses, serial killers, assassins, dangerous narcissists and everything in-between, all of whom - despite our better judgement - are endearing and somehow easy to root for.
For this list, focus will be put on the biggest antiheroes of them all, each of whom have helped shaped the modern TV landscape and remain some of the best and most compelling characters on the small screen.
From classic crime dramas to recent thrillers, animated tragicomedies to supernatural action series, here are the 10 greatest TV antiheroes of all time.
Spoilers follow.
10. Dexter Morgan - Dexter
The character of Dexter Morgan - played in the eponymous show by Michael C. Hall and created by author Jeff Lindsay - is one of the most original and intriguing antiheroes ever put to the small screen.
A blood splatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police, Dexter was a serial killer who used his job to target murderers, and took extreme caution to ensure no one learned his secret.
Despite being a textbook sociopath with an unquenchable bloodlust who murdered, manipulated, kidnapped, stalked and lied his way through the show's eight-season run, Dexter always managed to come across as endearing and even heroic.
Due in equal measure to the fact that he always faced-off against criminals even worse than himself, the darkly humorous tone the series took with his inability to fit in with society, and Hall's magnetic and creepily charming performance, Dexter was a tough guy to hate, even when he took things too far and broke the rules of his own strict code.