From Emily in Friends to Che Diaz: the TV characters so bad that they ruined shows

The Guardian

04-08-2025

Sometimes, all it takes to change your relationship to a TV show is one character. Viewers are all enjoying the One Day-meets-High Fidelity vibes of BBC Two's nostalgic romance Mix Tape. However, none of them can stand the cassette-crossed lovers' spouses. Yes, for every role that becomes a firm viewer favourite, another is reviled by the show's fanbase. Lena Dunham's latest creation, Too Much, seems to be entirely populated by unappealing characters.
Meanwhile, Peppa Pig devotees are in a porcine pickle over the imminent onscreen arrival of a new little sister, baby piglet Evie. Cartoon swine devotees fear this gimmicky addition will upset the delicate balance of the four-way family unit that has been beloved by preschoolers for 21 years. If the oinking blockbuster ain't broke, why fix it?
The current hate figures won't be the last to spoil a successful programme. We name and shame the unlucky 13 characters who ruined TV shows …
Vanity Fair dubbed the character 'divisive'. The New York Times called them 'polarising'. Just two of the euphemisms for being downright awful. As Miranda's love interest in the Sex and the City sequel, so-called comedian Che was much maligned as an unsubtle caricature of a non-binary person. The character simply made no sense, let alone as a match for the hitherto heterosexual Miranda. They spoke as if they had swallowed a gender studies textbook. They laughed at their own non-jokes. They generally jarred with fans. Some feel similarly about Carrie's rekindled relationship with Aidan, with his mullet, whispery tones and cringe-inducing phone sex. Shudder.
That noise isn't dire wolves; it's howls of protest from fans. The problematically named 'Bran the Broken' spent most of HBO's fantasy saga on the sidelines – wearing furs, sitting in trees and making gnomic pronouncements like a creepy schoolkid in the corner of the playground. He even disappeared for an entire season and wasn't much missed. No wonder it was, ahem, 'controversial' when this passive fringe figure was suddenly picked as Ruler of the Six Kingdoms. A widely reviled choice.
With mega-rated Christmas specials and a dodgy lock-up full of lovely jubbly catchphrases, the Trotter brothers once ruled the sitcom roost. Cushty. While they ducked 'n' dived around Peckham, Grandad rarely left his armchair in Nelson Mandela House but added a bass note of world-weary, hat-clad, croaky-voiced craftiness. When the actor Lennard Pearce died in 1984, he was replaced by the wackier Uncle Albert – a salty old sea dog with Captain Birds Eye's beard and precisely one joke, which was starting every sentence with 'During the war … ' The decline began, hastened by Del finding love with Raquel and Rodders falling for Cassandra. You plonkers.
'Puppy power! Lemme at 'em, Uncle Scoob! Scrappy dappy Doo!' Pipe down, you insufferable brat. When the Hanna-Barbera cartoon suffered a ratings slump, producers brought in Scooby's rambunctious nephew to join the ghost-hunting gang as an uncalled-for comic foil. The annoying ankle-biter sparked an immediate backlash. 'Zoinks,' indeed. Scrappy was so hated that The Simpsons mocked him with the rapping, surfing Poochie in cartoon-within-a-cartoon The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.
Crowbarring a token British actor into an American show rarely works. So it proved when Helen Baxendale earned a big-money transfer from Cold Feet to Friends. Intended to turn the Ross 'n' Rachel saga into a love triangle, Emily was an unfunny wet blanket who just got in the way. She spent most of her screen time storming out of rooms in jealous huffs. Her arrival led to the ropy London episodes, complete with cameos from Sarah Ferguson and Richard Branson. Emily's sole saving grace: the gasp-inducing moment when Ross accidentally said Rachel's name at the altar. Pivot!
The Apple TV+ hit is a feelgood sports-com about teamwork, optimism and compassion. Did it really need to turn one of its supporting characters into an unconvincing panto villain? Shortly after arriving to manage AFC Richmond, our titular hero spotted the kit man's tactical nous, promoted him to assistant coach and nicknamed him Nate the Great. How did Nate repay him? By demanding all the credit for Richmond's success, bullying colleagues and mocking his mentor's panic attacks – before leaving to manage the club's arch rival. Nate the Grate, more like.
Physiotherapist-cum-housekeeper Daphne Moon may have been lovable, but whenever her family from back home in Blighty turned up, it was painful to behold. Her brother Simon was a regular visitor to Seattle, appearing in nine episodes as a boozy, boorish numpty, but the actor Anthony LaPaglia inexplicably spoke in a ropy cockney accent, rather than a more logical Mancunian one. Even more inexplicably, he won an Emmy for the role. Equally bad was their battleaxe mother, Gertrude (Millicent Martin).
The Showtime series was a tense, knotty espionage thriller about the cat-and-mouse relationship between CIA spook Carrie Mathison and Marine-turned-al-Qaida sleeper agent Sgt Nicholas Brody. Homeland wasn't an angsty teen soap. Yet this is exactly what it turned into during scenes involving Brody's sulking, whining daughter Dana. She at least met her petulant match in the vice-president's hit-and-run driver son Finn, played by a 16-year-old Timothée Chalamet. Wonder what happened to that guy? In other 'annoying offspring of TV action men' news, see Jack Bauer's daughter Kim from 24 – notably when she got trapped in a snare and menaced by a wild cougar. Dammit, Jack!
The Office: An American Workplace wasn't just a rare US remake worthy of the British original. It became a truly great sitcom in its own right. Cracks appeared, however, when Dunder Mifflin boss Michael Scott departed and preppy sales rep Andy Bernard was promoted to regional manager. Arrogant and anger prone, he lacked Michael's bumbling humanity and drained the show of its gentle charm. It was like replacing David Brent with Finchy.
The first two series of the border-straddling Nordic noir were all-timers, following the unlikely duo of neurodiverse Swedish sleuth Saga Norén and her slobby, sarky Danish counterpart Martin Rohde. When the second run ended with Martin jailed, Saga needed a new sidekick, hence the arrival of the handsome but haunted Henrik. The pair soon entered into a relationship (eyeroll). With more focus on the detectives' private lives, the crime drama lost its way. Back to Sarah Lund's jumpers, then.
Recurring character Elsbeth was a Chicago defence attorney for whom words such as 'quirky' and 'kooky' might have been invented. All 'I'm so random!' pronouncements and primary-coloured outfits, she was a tryhard irritant who somehow became a fan favourite. Amid the high-class legal drama, it felt as if she had wandered in from a tonally different, inferior show. Which she then got, landing her own spin-off, the Ronseal-titled Elsbeth. There's no accounting for taste.
The disastrous introduction of this previously unmentioned Brady family member coined the US terms 'Cousin Oliver syndrome' and 'add-a-kid' – shorthand for a failed bid to boost flagging ratings with a supposedly cute child. This blond, bespectacled devil spawn is among the most hated characters in sitcom history. Six episodes after Oliver's arrival, ABC axed the show. A decade later came another example: Sam, the bowl-cut best friend of Gary Coleman's Arnold, who joined the Diff'rent Strokes cast for its final two series. It might take diff'rent strokes to move the world, but Sam could do one.
The pointless polar bear. The hatch. The Others. The Dharma Initiative. The giant foot statue, Jack's tattoos. Flashbacks, flash-forwards and sideways flashes. There were many points at which the plane crash drama disappeared up its own rear propeller but the clincher came when a middle-aged man in black became the personification of evil. He had previously appeared as the Smoke Monster, then was able to inhabit the dead. He turned out to be the villainous twin of the mysterious Jacob, white-clad protector of 'The Heart of the Island'. All clear? Thought not.