Give me characters to care about
My wife and I have been using critical acclaim and/or awards as a filter for choosing TV shows/movies to watch. Given that taste is subjective, sometimes the much-raved about shows exceeded expectations while at other times they left me feeling disappointed.
What I’ve realised though is that if a TV show/movie doesn’t have characters that I care about, it’s a quite likely that the show will be in Camp Disappointment. I’ve watched shows with unknown (to me) actors playing compelling characters and I became invested. I’ve also watched award-winning actors play characters, whom I couldn’t care less about if they died, no matter how Oscar-baity their acting might be.
Here are 2 examples each for either type: POSSIBLE SPOILERS
#Thumbs- Up
- Man Like Mobeen’s protagonist, the former drug dealer Mobeen (played by Guz Khan) is rougher around the edges but he was someone I wanted to see succeed.
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms had Peter Claffey play Ser Dunk, who makes us care for this lowly wannabe knight.
#Thumbs-down
- The Beast in Me’s Aggie Wiggs (played by Claire Dane) is obviously the person we’re meant to root for in her struggle against the murderous Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) but I honestly would have been okay if she had gone down. I found her quite irritating to be honest.
- In the Game of Thrones universe we have House of the Dragon with all its bickering royals and again, if they all slaughtered each other, my reaction would be well…okay?
I’m not entirely sure what the winning formula is, but my guess is that a good actor can only squeeze so much out of a poorly written character. And so writers need to write better characters. Happy to hear other thoughts though!