How Tv works: Ten of the most appealing characters on TV

The cast of firefly, looking like they have history and motivations.

The TV Guide channel recently ran a countdown of the sexiest guys on television, but the people acting the parts, it can be argued, aren't as important as the characters they play-- that's who the fans are watching each week, and that's who makes them famous, whether it's one defining role, such as Tom Selleck's Magnum PI, or several roles, like LeVar Burton's Toby / Kunta Kinte, and Geordi LaForge, and as the host of Reading Rainbow. If shows are to survive the times they're made in and still be interesting years later, decades later, it's going to have to be the characters that carry them. So here's our list of the most interesting characters on television of all time (or, at least since we started watching TV).

Remington Steele (Remington Steele): What's not to love about a man who's so much a con artist that he doesn't know who he really is? Add to that a distressing amount of charm, a quick wit, a love of old movies, a sort of delicate cluelessness about normal lives, and a deep and abiding affection for a very spiky and inconsistent broad, and you've got one of the best detectives in a decade full of detectives.

General Jack O'Neill (Stargate SG-1): One of the first people to step off the planet by way of the Stargate, and leader of the first team commissioned to do it as their job (and by the way? Coolest. Job. Ever.), Jack is tough, sarcastic, silly, much more complex than he lets on, a survivor, and stubborn enough to bring down an ancient alien empire. Mixed in with Richard Dean Anderson's ability to convey very deep emotion with the smallest facial changes, and his equal loves for his resident brain Samantha Carter and pie, and he comes out as both kick-ass and endearing.

Lilly and Marshall (How I Met Your Mother): These two are so perfectly in love the way normal people are: sweet and silly and comfortable with themselves and each other to the point where it's almost sad that the actors aren't equally as in love. They balance each other's characters, and together, they're more interesting then they are individually.

Patrick Jane (The Mentalist): Another desperate charmer, but this one is all charm over a deep desolation brought on by the deaths of his wife and daughter. It makes for a complex character that could easily have been flat and dull, and handled any less expertly, could have been too much. But the Jane we get is clever, often amoral, sometimes illegal, daring, desperate, broken, fiendishly charming, endearing, and mischievous, while keeping very much to himself, so that even we who know all sides of the show don't ever know all of what to expect from him.

Thomas Magnum (Magnum PI): Silly, goofy, dangerous and haunted, magnum is one of the most iconic men on television. A Vietnam vet, a persistent and dedicated investigator, a man with a past, cheeky and unusual and deeply good, Magnum is a normal guy and a wonderful man, and a classic.

John Crichton and Aeryn Sun (Farscape): The character of John Crichton could easily have been made into an idiot-- just read some of the novelizations so see how easily-- but this fish out of it's galaxy is doing his damnedest to make do with what he has, to use his weird humanness to survive in an even weirder place that seems to much more vivid than Earth ever did, and to help a lost and rejected soldier find the good side she'd always avoided. Aeryn, on the other hand, is abandoned by her people and forced to learn a new life, and that gives us this great arc of figuring out everything about love, friendship, self-reliance, and who you are in the face of giant empires. This is one of those couples that stand alone as well as together, and that makes them amazing.

House: He's not a nice guy. He's drug-addicted, callus, mean, intentionally hurtful, deliciously sarcastic, severely damaged-- and also really good at showing a huge array of sadness, hurt, regret, and other negative-type emotions with very little changes in face and body and tone of voice. He's about as complex as a fictional character comes, and even when we think we can take his reactions for granted and figure him out-- or that the other characters can-- he does something new and has a totally rational explanation for it. It's amazing, and keeps the viewers viewing, even when the show itself gets formulaic and degenerates into silliness.

Commander Spock (Star Trek: The Original Series): Half alien, half human, and constantly at war with himself. Watching him evolve through the series is great, and knowing what comes after in the movies-- namely, rediscovering himself, developing a deeper sense of humor, allowing that sometimes emotions are necessary-- just makes it better. He's brilliant, logical to the point of damaging himself sometimes, dedicated to science and his job, and walks that thin, tight line between what he is and what he wants to be.

The entire cast of Firefly: It would be crazy to separate them out here, and they'd fill most of this list, anyway. They work together, shining in the very human interactions in the very strange situations they find themselves in, dragging their histories behind them like banners. Even before we get their back stories, we understand that there are histories we don't know informing all their reactions-- Mal's reluctance to get close to people, Zoe's toughness, Wash's flippancy, Kaylee's enthusiasm, Jayne's bullishness, River's lunacy and Simon's overprotectiveness and Book's calm, Inara's grace. All of it has a reason, and even in those short thirteen episodes, we get to see that they're there, even if we don't fully know what they are. It's a credit to the acting as well as the writing, and it's a damn shame it never got renewed, but we fans already knew that, too.

The Doctor: How can a person not find the Doctor appealing? He's ten people in one, ten personalities informing each other, while simultaneously having each one be unique. He's cheeky, brilliant, funny, energetic, infectious, completely off his gourd, magnetic, broken, lonely, stubborn, sturdy, sometimes startlingly alien, different than us while still being so similar... The list goes way on, after forty-five years of dozens of writers expanding on the basic theme. If you find Ten too twitchy, there's nine others to choose from to find your taste: how about the vagabondish Two? The professorial Seven? The moody Nine? The cranky and imperious three? There's a doctor for all tastes, and taken all together, he's incredibly appealing.