Do they make dramas with likable characters anymore?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by James Slattery, Jun 15, 2018.

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  1. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    The lead in House was, for me, one of the most interesting characters on TV in decades.
     
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  2. Nice Marmot

    Nice Marmot Nothin’ feels right but doin’ wrong anymore

    Location:
    Tryon NC
    Did you watch House from beginning to end? By the end, the humor went away. Its like the show fell into what every other show had become and House wasn't likable anymore.
     
  3. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    Yes, I did. One of my favorite shows of all time. Because of the characters.
     
  4. rene smalldridge

    rene smalldridge Senior Member

    Location:
    manhattan,kansas
    I very much like dramas in which the characters are very flawed because that is how I view humans including myself.
    When I view older television shows and movies , as I have gotten older, they sometimes make me wince because of the fantasy good guy versus bad guy element in them.
    Oftentimes it is because these characters are portrayed as "good" even though they are totally embedded in what I perceive now as corrupt,dehumanizing and downright evil societal and authoritarian power structures.
    And those types of portrayal are far more disturbing to me than simply showing the human condition for what it is to the extent that some modern dramas do.
     
  5. Nice Marmot

    Nice Marmot Nothin’ feels right but doin’ wrong anymore

    Location:
    Tryon NC
    For me, when they were writing it that the characters (his friends) in the show didn't even like him anymore I found it hard to watch. It just seemed to be following the trend that the OP is referring to.

    Clearly, I'm going to be one in the minority of this discussion, but I too have stopped watching TV shows because of the unlikeable lead characters.
     
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  6. delmonaco

    delmonaco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sofia, Bulgaria
    Just watching the third season of "The Durrells", and I love all the characters in it. :)
     
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  7. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    To use a movie example, the characters in Pulp Fiction, while genuinely reprehensible for the most part - hired killers, drug dealers, robbers - they were fun to watch because they had a sense of humor. Quentin described it as a "hang out" film, the sort you watch again and again because you want to spend time with the characters. A TV show needs that quality, because you're going to be spending dozens of hours with them over a period of years.
     
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  8. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Going through NYPD Blue and that's a terrific example of how to write an arc for a character. The show is about Sipowicz' redemption. Plenty of likable characters throughout the show. Most are flawed to some degree but are basically good people doing the best they can... and that'd be a nice refreshing change from what we almost always see, now.
     
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  9. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    There were several characters I genuinely liked on Mad Men, even when they were doing bad (mostly self-destructive) things.

    All of the lead characters on Leverage were incredibly charming.
     
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  10. Juan Matus

    Juan Matus Reformed Audiophile

    Twin Peaks
     
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  11. George Co-Stanza

    George Co-Stanza Forum Resident

    Location:
    America
    I thought Dexter Morgan, Tony Soprano and Walter White were all likable characters, within the context of the stories. Credit for that goes to the writing as well as the incredible acting skills of Hall, Gandolfini and Cranston. Flawed characters are always so interesting to watch.

    Then, we have Randall Pearson from This Is Us, a character played fantastically by Sterling K. Brown, but his character is almost "too likable" in the sense that he is the ultimate good guy who seemingly always makes the right decision and does the right thing. Seems almost unrealistic that someone could be that good.

    I'd rather watch deeply flawed characters.
     
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  12. The Good Wife has some likeable and even admirable characters, in both lead and support roles. (The flakey ADD genius attorney who shows up occasionally in some episodes is a personal favorite.) The leads in the cast are also depicted as complex and imperfect, thankfully. But they're basically good people who are out to do the good and just thing, in a show that's thematically all about moral and ethical dilemmas. You root for them.

    The Good Wife is also great writing. It's an authentically deep show. I didn't catch on to it until it was over, and archived on Netflix. With all due respect, I had thought it was some chick-flick show. And maybe it is; the soap opera component is awfully high. But it's excellent chick flickery. Not vapid and predictable, like a certain overhyped late 90s show about a foursome of self-absorbed post-ingenues in Manhattan trying to "have it all."
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2018
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  13. Tanx

    Tanx Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    I'm watching Sherlock now on Netflix (very late to the party, I know), and I find both leads very likeable when, on paper, they should be pretty repugnant. The British shows seem to be better at creating characters nuanced enough to pull this off.
     
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  14. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    They did for awile:

    [​IMG]
     
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  15. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    But by then, his ducklings, competing for his attention and advice, were not as vicious or tenacious anymore. You could see the show striving to keep that balance. At the end of the day, an audience has to at lease see some manner of morals, or at least ethics, somewhere in the cast, they'd like to see in themselves.

    The "Scooby Gang" around the main player is such an important salad...ya gotta get just the right mushrooms, not too many croutons, ets. Ethics of the supporting players go a long way towards softening-up how dark the lead is. That's why super-hero casts (are you listening, Marvel?) are so difficult to do; they're always coming out of some closet or another, just for shock value - "BOO-!"

    I've always liked the shifting dramatic tensions within the Blindspot team; not innovative as far as modern Scoobies go, but just well-done, like you'd expect from a CBS show, f'rinstance...
     
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  16. Nice Marmot

    Nice Marmot Nothin’ feels right but doin’ wrong anymore

    Location:
    Tryon NC
    Exactly. Even a good anti-hero character is exhibiting morals or attitude the audience can relate to. In many of these shows, the one character people can relate to, based on morals, ends up getting killed (or in some other way paying the price) because of the lead character's actions. It's a pattern that's happening again and again, in all of these shows.
     
  17. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    I think I hit on this during Dylan McDermott's tenure on The Practice, where David Kelly wrote reams about his defending his douchiness to other characters, on the basis of how noble a gig it was to provide quality representation to all citizens, particularly if everybody feels they don't deserve it, because This Is America, Dammit! or some such conclusion. And it hit me, it wouldn't be as hard to show that if they didn't have to keep verbally standing up for themselves every other show segment.
     
  18. tomhayes

    tomhayes Senior Member

    Location:
    San Diego, Ca
    I did not like Raylan after about 6 episodes. He was incredibly stupid and you come to realize that he DOES enjoy shooting people.

    The Boyd character , while not likable, was even dumber.

    Without the women in their lives both of these guys would have been done for many times over in the show.

    Now - I did like the Constable Bob a lot - which is weird - because he was not smart - but he was much more likable. (Confession: I stopped watching at the end of season 5 - I could not take anymore of these immoral and stupid people - I got my only family I can watch.)

    IMHO.
     
  19. Chazro

    Chazro Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Palm Bch, Fl.
    Sol Starr and, aside from his anger issues, Seth Bullock. Charlie Utter and the newspaper guy. Though flawed, the doc and the priest weren't bad people. And of course, Jewel!
     
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  20. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    That's definitely a "IMHO".
     
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  21. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    My wife and I love House but we got to a point when trying to rewatch the series that we could only handle Greg House in small doses- House was always a bit of an a--hole, but he did seem to get worse as the series went on...
    The Good Wife is one of my wife's favourite shows. Not really my cup of tea, but I do like the weird, dark humour that popped up on the show now and again. The missus can't abide the Good Fight spinoff at all, though- way too political for her tastes.
     
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  22. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Madam Secretary is completely devoid of unlikable regular characters - they're all moral, up-standing and very likable.
     
  23. Wingman

    Wingman Bored of the Rings

    Location:
    Europe
    Check out an amazing movie from South Korea called: "The Handmaid".
     
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  24. BeatlesObsessive

    BeatlesObsessive The Earl of Sandwich Ness

    ...not to mention lots of sex scenes featuring un****able actors paired up with some of the sweetest candy ever seen onscreen. But ain't that always the way..until last fall anyway...
     
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  25. BeatlesObsessive

    BeatlesObsessive The Earl of Sandwich Ness

    ... but he "loved" women. That has to count for something. He WAS a gentleman!
     
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