Top 5 Weak Fictional TV Creations

I watch a lot of TV. I watch a lot of TV that I like, but I also find myself watching a lot of awful TV, and then wondering why I didn't just leave the room. Throughout my years of channel flipping, if there is one thing I have learnt, it is this: Poor character construction can be both the downfall of a strong show and the reason for a weak one. In light of that, I've compiled a list of my top 5 TV characters who fail to meet the mark. In no particular order, they're all rubbish, and each in their own special way.

1. Phoebe, "Friends"

All the characters in Friends are well put together, but I can only assume the writers were overcome with laziness when it came to writing Phoebe. Her ludicrous background of homelessness, street crime and violence makes little to no sense, and her self-righteous vegetarianism and anti-establishment attitude are constantly contradicted. She eats meat when she's pregnant, she wears fur in one episode, and she works for a massage parlour owned by a huge corporation that she strongly disagrees with. She's just a silly, unfeasible character, and it's such a shame that they couldn't have toned her down and injected a bit of subtlety into her before the show got so popular.

2. Miranda, "Sex and the City"

Ok, so she's essentially the greatest of four evils, but I've chosen Miranda purely because, to me, she seems completely out of keeping with the show's "chic" and "sexy" nature that's so appealing to the entire female population of the world. She's super, super lame; she's "frumpy" (or whatever Trinny and Susannah are calling it these days); she's comparatively unattractive (although I've never seen the appeal of any of the SATC girls , except Charlotte); and she just has a lot less to contribute. That's not to say I like any of the other characters; the whole show is a masterful display of ignorant, misguided pseudo-feminism. But that's another story for another time.

3. Kenny, "South Park"

South Park is one of my favourite shows on TV, but Kenny just feels a bit out of place now that the show has matured and improved so much since the earlier series'. The "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" jokes were all well and good when South Park was just about poo and animal sex, but nowadays it feels like he hasn't really stood the test of time with the rest of the show.

4. Gwen, "Gavin and Stacey"

Ignore the picture, this doesn't include Bryn, I wouldn't badmouth him (or Rob Brydon, for that matter) for a second. This is exclusively about Gwen, his sister-in-law, and close friend. What could I say about her? Hardly anything really, there's almost nothing to her character other than omelettes. Gavin and Stacey gave us some of the best character creations I've seen in a while, but the show would run just as well, if not better, without Gwen in it.

5. The entire cast, "One Tree Hill"

From where I'm standing, it seems like every single character in One Tree Hill is just a big, stereotyped bundle of cliches. Take the "emo" one, for example, who paints terrible pictures, writes bad poetry, and listens to music in her room while she cries; or possibly the most shamelessly "streetwise" token black guy that has ever graced our screens, whose name is "Skillz," and who calls everybody "dawg" and "homie." I won't even go any further, it's just rubbish.