10 TV Shows You Didn't Realise You Were Following The Villain

To be fair, the entire point of The Wire is that the "real world" doesn't have simplistic heroes or villains, but at the same time, it's also tough to defend the actions of Baltimore PD Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) by the show's fifth season.

Though McNulty is shown to be an arrogant, reckless alcoholic throughout all of the show's series, his obsession with taking down drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) ultimately sees him crossing the line in an irredeemable way.

In season five, in what's also by far the show's most controversial and ridiculous storyline, McNulty stages the murders of homeless men to look like the work of a serial killer, even mutilating corpses in the process, in the hope of receiving more department funding to continue investigating Stanfield.

Worse still, McNulty even kidnaps a homeless man and makes phone calls while masquerading as the non-existent killer, an FBI profile of which hilariously reflects McNulty himself.

After his work disrupts other investigations, a guilt-ridden McNulty finally comes clean, losing his job in the process. But true to its measured realism, the series' closing montage reveals that his efforts were basically for nought because there's no stopping "the game."

McNulty certainly wasn't the worst character in The Wire by any means, but he took an unmistakable plunge off a cliff in the final season.