Small screen specials: My 5 favourite TV sitcom characters

I am pretty sure that someone somewhere, most likely my mother, or Big Bird, said with grave solemnity that you should never ever play favourites.

Something to do with feelings getting hurt, people getting marginalised, and people starving over in Ethiopia (wait, no, that last one was for something else entirely).

Anyway, the reality is that try as you might to love everyone equally, the reality is that someone is always going to bubble to the top as the king of the heap, lord of the hill, queen of all the muck (whoever came up with those terms should had a thing about ruling over less than optimal patches of land).

And so it is with the sitcoms we often watch.

For instance, while the show might be called Will and Grace, we spend an inordinate amount of time looking for Jack and Karen, hoping they will appear; or think of Happy Days – sure it was about a wholesome mid-’50s Milwaukee family called the Cunninghams but let’s be honest, the only one we really wanted to see all the time was Fonzie.

Sometimes, it’s the main characters who rule our affections, but however emsemble-ish a sitcom might be, and they all try to be as much as is humanly possible, we always end up loving one character a little, or a whole lot, more than the others.

And so it is me.

Dharma (Dharma & Greg, 1997-2002)

Granted Dharma, free-spirited child of hippie parents and yoga instructor might not have been quite as memorable without straightlaced WASP husband Greg to offset her – the two married on their first date setting us off on 5 seasons of humour-rich culture clashes – but she quickly emerged as my enduring favourite.

It could have been the fact that I hail from a hippie-rich region of northern NSW and thus have a soft spot for all things traditional even if I have never ridden in a tie dyed Kombi Van in my life, or that despite my freeranging personality, life circumstances forced me into a very square box of which I longed to be free, or simply that Dharma, played by Jenna Elfman with a thousand lifetime’s worth of joie de vivre and say what’s really on your mind-ishness, was simply a joy to watch.

Whatever the pull, and I suspect it was a combination of all three, Dharma was my favourite character out of this delightful sitcom which, though it ran out of steam on its essentially one-joke premise towards the end – but oh how they ran with it in the meantime! – was a love note to the importance of following your heart but not at the expense of caring about the people around you.

Alex. P Keaton (Family Ties, 1982-1989)

He may have had political views that didn’t even come close to matching mine in any way, and an overweening confidence bordering on rampant arrogance, but aspiring capitalist and teen Republican Alex P. Keaton, the child of peace, love and mung beans parents still wishing it was the 1960s, was a standout character any way you looked at him.

By sheer performance alone, he was unmissable; add to that the willingness of the show’s writers to continually flesh him out as a character, give him foibles, soft spots and real humanity, and you had someone who was as real as the person sitting next to you watching the show.

A delight to watch except when he made you so angry you wanted to throw something at the TV to remind him he was being unconscionably selfish, Alex P. Keaton was the emotional epicentre of Family Ties, and a large part of the reason why I tuned in week after week.

Frasier Crane (Frasier, 1993-2004)

Oddly enough I didn’t really pay much attention to Frasier when he was but one of a very memorable constellation of stars on Cheers.

But once he moved to Seattle and reunited, rather awkwardly at first with his dad and brother, and forged new friendships with coworkers and physical therapists alike, I warmed to him immensely, even when he was at his most vain peacock glorious.

Yes he got it wrong more than often not, made a host of rather elemental social mistakes, blinded often by a sense that he had it far more together than the mere mortals surrounding him; but he was also warm, generous, caring, compassionate and willing to admit when he’d made some great error of humanity.

And yes, that it was OK, if your dad loved it, to leave ugly Christmas decorations up throughout the season (you could, still of course, grimace behind his back; well ’til you were caught in the act).

Leslie Knope (Parks and Recreation, 2009-2015)

She started off an amusing one-note character with political stars in her eyes in a small network sitcom that could, and most certainly did, for 7 very funny, insightful seasons, but grew over time into a deep, multi-faceted person who made a real difference in the lives of the quirky group of people around her.

Played to perfection by the superlative Amy Poehler, Leslie Knope was the sort of person you wanted to have succeed; she might be odd yes, rather myopic when it came to her ambitions true, but she was inherently likeable, the sort of person you’d want in office representing you if only someone would let you vote for her.

Add to that her one-of-a-kind greetings for her bff Ann – who wouldn’t want to be regaled with “You are a beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk ox” and “Ann, you poetic noble land mermaid” – and you had exactly the kind of quirky, clever, deeply attractive character you couldn’t help but want to spend lots of time with.

Margo Leadbetter (The Good Life, 1975-1978) / Audrey fforbes-Hamilton (To the Manor Born, 1979-1981)

I was raised on classic British sitcoms.

Lots and lots of classic British sitcoms including two that still resonate deeply with me to this day – The Good Life, the unlikely tale of a husband and wife who forgo the usual trapping of corporate-fuelled suburban life in favour of a self-sustainable existence to the horror of their neighbours, and To the Manor Born, the story of one recently-widowed lord’s wife who finds herself sans manor, title, and for a moment, a reason to be.

Both were gloriously well-written, and while possessed of formidably good ensemble casts, it was Penelope Keith as Margo Leadbetter and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton respectively who really stood out for me.

She took what could so easily have been one note characters and gave them richness and depth and an appeal that by rights they should not have had in such full measure; she was, and is, one of those superlative actors who can take a character on paper and bring them to life in ways that the writers likely may not have conceived.