Top 5 television characters

Al Swarengen

 

"Gunsmoke" aired for 20 seasons,
so generations of viewers followed Matt Dillon.

 

What about the character who's been played by many more actors than five and is still going strong after 6o years -- Dr. Who.

 

That's not his name.

He's simply The Doctor. And I believe someone mentioned him early in this thread.

 

My Top 5 Sopranos

Tony
Carm
Janice
Artie
Richie Aprile

I could list ten more easily.

 

Would you believe... Maxwell Smart?

 

Missed my list by that much.

 

I went with Basil in my list, but Manuel absolutely was a consideration.

I taught my son's parakeet to say "How are you, sir? I speak English. I learn it from a book."

 

I can feel myself getting nerdier responding to this...

S/He's known only as "The Doctor" and the show is styled as "Doctor Who."

My very subjective list of ten favourite characters in no particular order:

1. Baber Siddiqui - Little Mosque on the Prairie - Anyone with North African/Mediterranean roots knows a Baber. Hi, Dad!

2. Malcolm Tucker - The Thick of It - I had a Shih Tzu who reminded me of Malcolm. The irony is I named him after one of the easiest-going players in the NHL.

3. Archdeacon Robert - rev. - Hard to believe Simon McBurney is the bitchy Archdeacon with a heart of something gold-ish on rev. and the hippy, dippy choir master on The Vicar of Dibley.

4. Speaking of which... David Horton - The Vicar of Dibley - Gary Waldhorn was an old hand at sitcoms by the time he played the Horton pere. I have a tendency to watch for instances of good writing and acting and seeing someone completely turn around a character who had been an amalgam of stock tropes with one word still impresses the heck out of me.

5. Alice Tinker-Horton - The Vicar of Dibley - Been there, done that, worn the collar. I love me some Alice.

6. Manny - Black Books - There's a lot to love about this odd little show. Manny is the human iteration of Peanuts' Snoopy.

7. Wanda Dollard - Corner Gas - Over-educated, under-employed, and somehow happy in her own skin. She's my spirit animal.

8. Brian Topp - Spaced - Anyone who ever spent time in art school knows a Brian. Ours at CCAC was a guy who used to dehydrate roadkill, lacquer it, and then mount it on posts around the campus.

9. Every Character Ellen Dubin Played - Lexx - Lexx was this weird and weirdly beautiful show a bunch of people who wrote about hockey watched during a lockout. We'd collectively agreed to watch a series together and no one could remember the name of the show with a living spaceship. So some of us ended up watching Farscape and others of us watched Lexx. Those of us who stuck with Lexx were labeled pervy freaks for it. I don't care. I own copies of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension AND Big Trouble in Little China if that tells you anything about my taste in sci-fi. So back to Dubin. She embraced every character with the glee of a local kiddie show actor on nitrous. She was so much fun to watch! Actually, everyone was.

10. Jim Moriarty - Sherlock - The best Moriarty ever. He creeped the heck out of me. Then he's The Hot Priest on Fleabag? Nooooooooooooo! (And am I the only one excited that La Phoebe is going to be in the next Indiana Jones movie?)

 

Moriarty in Sherlock *was* outstanding.

Kudos to whoever mentioned Dr. Perry Cox from Scrubs. Also, here’s one I just remembered: Dan Fielding, Night Court.

 

Perry Mason.
Bret Maverick