This Popular Poll of the “Best” TV Characters Is Almost All White Guys

September 23, 2016

It’s not really a secret that TV could use more diversity. We are always talking about it, always asking for it. We’ve also raised quite a stink about diversity in politics — remember when Paul Ryan posted this pic? But this poll on Digital Spy asked their readers to vote for their favorite TV characters, and so far the list is pretty shockingly Caucasian. This might have something to do with the fact that there are ten times more white people on TV than anybody else, but that’s an issue in itself. Oh yeah, the list is also pretty penis-centric in the top twenty, but what else is new. (Seriously, there are only four women who deserve to be in the top twenty of this list?) The poll selected 70 characters to vote from, and only chose one character from each series. This might explain the lack of diversity in the list, considering many shows only have one or two characters of color. All told, there are a grand total of seven people of color in the list, only one of whom — Richard Ayoade’s Maurice Moss, from The IT Crowd at #17 — cracked the top twenty. Omar from The Wire is all the way down at #63, so you know they screwed up somewhere. What do you think? Is this the voters’ fault or did Digital Spy set this up poorly? Let us know in the comments below or @WhatsTrending on Twitter.