Mad Men: Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Photograph: BBC
A sympathetic serial killer I can cope with - especially one as brilliant as Dexter. But heroic advertising executives, as seen in Mad Men? Come on. It's really not the sexism, racism, homophobia and anti-semitism that circulates Madison Avenue as pervasively as the cigarette smoke that everyone exhales (which some will watch ironically and some will simply revel in). It's the mere fact that these guys are advertising executives. Indeed, I am reminded of Reaper and Sam's dad saying to him that Satan has skills he might find useful: "I've created cartoon mascots to sell cigarettes to kids." That is not nice.
I know protagonists don't have to be heroes. You can be captivated by characters without being enamoured by their morality (see Damages' Patty Hewes). And, so goes the orthodoxy, monsters make for more compelling viewing than good people. Certainly that's the cliche that actors trot out about playing villains. (Let's leave aside the truth of that for the moment. I wonder if it isn't easier to play a villain than to make a good character, or a character who's trying to be good in difficult circumstances, interesting.)
Whatever way you slice it, The Sopranos has a lot to answer for.
But is there a character that simply couldn't be made a protagonist of a drama? ITV1 tried to make the exploits of estate agents interesting in Sold but was that more to do with the execution of the idea rather than the idea itself? In upcoming The Fixer, Andrew Buchan plays a state-sponsored assassin but he's hardly a villain - more one of those good people trapped in terrible circumstances. When even journalists have been made heroes (State of Play), is anything possible? Is no one above (or rather below) the redemptive attention of television? How about the heroic politician? Or paedophile?
