Articles- It´s all about the characters
- It´s all about the characters Part II
As in a previous post mentioned i´m really into complex characters. While in movies you follow a character about two hours, in a series you spend hours and hours with the same characters, see how they struggle and try to bring the(ir) world back to order.
I really learned to love series, espacially those where every episode is just one little part of the whole storyline, so if you miss one episode you´re screwed 
Here are some of my favourite series (without any particular order):
24 (website)
Probably everyone has heard of it, Kiefer Sutherland aka Jack Bauer saving Los Angeles for the fifth time now, and season six is in production. He works for the CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) as a field agent (at least in season one), and his methods are often not the right ones.
What i especially like is (you know, besides the characters) the look and the idea to show things in real time, so every episode (which is about 50 minutes) show 50 minutes of the life from the protagonists.
Lost (website)
A plane crashes on a mysterious island, a handicapped person is able to walk again and almost each of the passangers has got a dark history - thats Lost.
The variety of different characters, the beautiful setting and the cinema-like look are the impressive aspects of this series.
Battlestar Galactica (website)
A revival of the very old cult-series. The cylons (androids, some with human appearance) destroy caprica, the planet where the humans live. Just a fleet of about 50.000 people are able to escape, led by Commander (Admiral) Adama and the new President.
This series has got some really huge twists, espaciall at the end of the second season. Another thing to mention is that the writers are really really cruel to their characters, not only in a physical way, especially on the emotional side.
Dexter (website)
(The official homepage is only accessible from within the United States.. i mean, hello?)
Wow, the main character, Dexter, is really a weird one - he is unable to have have emotions (at least he pretends, sometimes you might think that he´s on his way to change) and already killed dogs as a child. His stepfather teached him how to “fit in” the society, pretend to be normal, and it works most of the time. But there´s this other obsession Dexter has, he just loves to kill people, so the only solution not to be a “bad person” is to kill only people that deserve it - criminals that got away without punishment.
Prison Break (website)
Michael Scofield´s brother is sentenced to death but is innocent, so he gets himself into prison to help his brother to break out. I haven´t seen that much episodes of Prison Break, but it´s another great series.
So what is it that makes me like those series so much? They all play in quite different genres, whereas i like each of them, but that´s not really the thing - to say it just once more: it´s all about the characters. What those series have in common is that the main characters are very complex, each one far away from beeing a perfect person, each one affected by his history, and each one with his own weaknesses and problems. It is just understandable that each of them makes mistakes, but all in all they try to bring back order to their lifes and their environment.
I don´t want to forget to mention that these series have an excellent storyline, sometimes they overstrech it a little bit, but in general they are beautifully constructed.
1 comment zu “It´s all about the characters Part II”
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Leslie
, 23. May, 2008 at 3:52 amJust today I watched the first episode of Dexter because a friend of mine was talking about it at book club.