5 TV shows with morally gray characters we root for even though we probably shouldn't
There's a specific type of TV character who shouldn't work — they do awful things, make selfish choices, leave damage everywhere they go — and yet you can't stop rooting for them. These five shows have that character, and they all make the case that morally gray is actually the most interesting place to be.
The Originals
Klaus Mikaelson is a thousand years old, routinely terrible, and somehow still the person you want to survive. The Originals works because it refuses to redeem Klaus completely — he's self-aware about what he is without that changing his behavior much. New Orleans is the perfect city for this show. Something about the atmosphere makes the chaos feel earned.
Fleabag
Fleabag is messy in a way that's deeply specific and deeply recognizable. She lies, deflects, turns everything into a joke before you can feel sorry for her. The show treats her complexity as something to sit with rather than fix, and the payoff for that patience is one of the most emotionally honest final episodes of any series, ever.
Ginny & Georgia
Georgia Miller will absolutely do whatever it takes to give her kids the life she never had — including things you're not supposed to do. The show never quite lets her off the hook, and it never quite condemns her either. That tension is what makes her so watchable. Ginny calling her out while also needing her is the central drama and it's genuinely uncomfortable in the best way.
Killing Eve
Villanelle is an assassin who dresses incredibly, feels nothing, and then meets the one person who makes her feel everything — who is also trying to catch her. Killing Eve runs entirely on the tension of two people who should be enemies and are not, wrapped in some of the best fashion decisions in television history. Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are simply unhinged in the best way.
The Vampire Diaries
Damon Salvatore starts the series by doing genuinely terrible things and spends the rest of it doing terrible things while slowly wanting to be better, which is its own specific kind of compelling. TVD understood that a redemption arc is most satisfying when it's not a straight line — and Damon's is about as zigzagged as it gets.
