TV and films with decent female characters

fits

I am watching The Fall at the moment and I have to say it is really nice to watch something with good meaty female characters (recommend). But there are few enough out there. Thought this might be a good thread to share films and TV ( and maybe books too) where there is a normal representation of women (ie more than romantic interest or eye candy). Others I would recommend are The Killing, and The Bridge. few enough films out there though that I have seen. Please feel free to share others.

Starscream25

Kathy Bates in misery.....

Allison Janey in the West Wing
Mary McDonnell in Battlestar Galactica, the latter are quite inspirational female characters in modern Television, Independent, determined, strong minded strength and composure are some of their characteristics, somewhat different to the way plenty of characters are portrayed on tv these days both make and female.

baby and crumble

Orange is the New Black (Netflix), BUffy the Vampire Slayer (old I know, but still one of the best), The Help...

Oh, and if you like fantasy books, you've got Hunger Games, and a fantastic series that so few people know about called "The Old Kingdom" by Garth Nix. The main characters are female, very strong powerful warriors and magicians. Brilliant books.

fits

baby and crumble wrote: »

Orange is the New Black (Netflix), BUffy the Vampire Slayer (old I know, but still one of the best), The Help...

Ha I knew you were going to post orange is the new black. Funnily enough I never got into it. I just find it too skanky. Stopped watching after the crazy girl peed in her bed cubicle. Its just eugh.

Oh, and if you like fantasy books, you've got Hunger Games, and a fantastic series that so few people know about called "The Old Kingdom" by Garth Nix. The main characters are female, very strong powerful warriors and magicians. Brilliant books.

I love fantasy books but hate the lack of good female characters in so many of them. will check those out cheers!

dodgygeezer

Harold and Maude 1970 film. Maude - what a character!

Daisy03

Veronica Mars and Borgen would be another two with strong female characters.

ancapailldorcha

Parks and Recreation? I love most of the cast and it's the best sitcom I've seen in ages.

fits

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Parks and Recreation? I love most of the cast and it's the best sitcom I've seen in ages.

Been meaning to check that out! Definitely next on the list.

fits

dodgygeezer wrote: »

Harold and Maude 1970 film. Maude - what a character!

Just looked it up on IMDB. Definitely going to check it out.

longshanks

The Good Wife, nearly all the best characters are women.

B0jangles

fits wrote: »

Been meaning to check that out! Definitely next on the list.

Be warned - season 1 is quite different from the later seasons, so if you start at the very beginning and don't like it, consider skipping on to the start of season 2. I did that and it really wasn't confusing or difficult to work out what was going on.

ancapailldorcha

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Parks and Recreation? I love most of the cast and it's the best sitcom I've seen in ages.

The first season is woeful to the point where's it's basically a different show. Fortunately, it's only 6 episodes long.

ElleEm

Scandal is very good. There are a couple of very interesting female characters in it. I second the vote for Alison Janney inThe West Wing. I am also a big fan of The Good Wife.

Ice Storm

Nurse Jackie and another vote for The Good Wife.

meeeeh

longshanks wrote: »

The Good Wife, nearly all the best characters are women.

The good wife is imo one of the best series on tv at the moment and it has excellent cast all around but some of the female characters definitely stand out. GOT has a couple of great female characters and they tend to stay alive a bit longer.

ShazGV

Excellent thread, looking forward to getting some recommendations out of this!


Orange is the New Black and Parks and Recreation are definitely on my list, as is Orphan Black - Tatiana Maslany is the main actress

and pretty much all of the main characters

and she's fantastic. Great characters in that show.

Also Marvel's Agents of Shield has surprisingly good female characters, they could've easily pushed them to the back but women make up half of the main cast and I like all of them!

I've heard great things about Agent Carter (another Marvel series) but haven't gotten around to watching it yet.

fits

Oh another good thing I watched recently is Girl Rising. Documentary profiling several young girls around the world and the lives they lead. So interesting, sad and also uplifting too. Really drives home the importance of educating women. Its on Netflix.

spurious

"Prisoner: Cell Block H" - I know it's old, but that makes it all the better that it had so many great female characters. "Wentworth" is based on it but not as good, IMO.

I loved the character Sara Lund in the original Danish version of 'The Killing' (Forbrydelsen).

**edit 'Harold and Maude' is my favourite film. I use it as a screening process.

expatinator

Wasn't orange is the new black inspired by a british show about female prisoners?

i can't remember what it was called, but it may be worth a watch.

spurious

expatinator wrote: »

Wasn't orange is the new black inspired by a british show about female prisoners?

i can't remember what it was called, but it may be worth a watch.

Depends how far you go back.
Within these walls (70s UK)-> Prisoner (70s/80s AUS) -> Bad Girls (90s/00s UK)

p1akuw47h5r3it

Clair Danes in Homeland.

thegreatgonzo

Daisy03 wrote: »

Veronica Mars and Borgen would be another two with strong female characters.

Another vote for Veronica Mars. She's a great character. Going to watch it all again soon.

jacksie66

This post has been deleted.

Ripley is the only female action hero I can think of offhand. Love the alien movies.

I haven't watched any of the shows mentioned here, must put them on my queue.

Johny_cash

Devil wears praha

mrsdewinter

I'm not enjoying the 2nd series of Broadchurch but it's reminded me how much I loved Olivia Colman's character. She's a working mother who really developed as a character in Series 1.

genie

Spiral and Happy Valley.

The Strawman Argument

Television
Enlightened Co-created and starring Laura Dern, was a really interesting effort by HBO that got better and better as it went along and just couldn't seem to find an audience.
30 Rock Liz Lemon, enough said there
Broad City Sort of a stoner sitcom type thing written by Abbi Johnson and Ilana Glazer, who also have the lead roles
Friday Night Lights Tami Taylor is a really strong character, much more than just the coach's wife. There's a fair few strong female characters scattered through the series too (some weak ones too though), same goes for Jason Katims's follow-up show too.
Seinfeld Just Elaine, she's fantastic but it's all down to Julia Louis-Dreyfuss rather than the writing or anything else, I'm sure.
Mad Men Both Joan and Peggy


Here's a bunch of really good films with distinct female leads that spring to my mind:
Safe, Birth, Two Days One Night, Housekeeping, Thelma and Louise, The Savages, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Frances Ha, Three Colours Trilogy, Enough Said, Poetry (2011), We Are The Best, A Woman Under the Influence, the Piano, All About My Mother, Wendy & Lucy, Rachel Getting Married, Morvern Callar, Olive Kitteridge, Boys Don't Cry, Winter's Bone, Down to the Bone, Waitress, Fish Tank, Frozen River, Wanda...

and here's a few I feel like rambling a bit about:
Take This Waltz Pretty divisive film but I thought this was fantastic, really feels like Michelle Williams got the character down perfectly. Sarah Silverman's good in it too.
Girlfriends Supposedly one of Kubrick's favourite films. Late 70s NY movie about a female photographer, has aged incredibly well, could easily swap release dates with Frances Ha.
Housekeeping Christine Lahti plays a highly eccentric, possibly mentally ill, woman who has had the responsibility of her two nieces landed upon her. Not entirely sure if the film works overall but Lahti's performance and character are pretty fantastic.
We Are The Best Super charming portrayal of two outsider best friends in their early teens forming a punk band. Lukas Moodyson has a solid track record with young female characters but this one's definitely the best.


Overall, it's a good idea to maybe try and focus on female writers/directors (e.g. Sarah Polley, Ava DuVernay, Lynne Ramsey) if you want to find some good ones. Quite a lot of the ones I listed were written and directed by women, they generally seem to do a better job at creating strong female characters than men can, if you can believe that!

username000

All the women in Firefly.

Cersei Lannister. Daenerys Targaryen. Melisandre. Yara Greyjoy. Arya Stark. All in Game of Thrones.

Katee Sackoff from Battlestar Galactica.

Michonne from The Walking Dead.

December2012

Is Broad City shown on Comedy Central here?

December2012

B0jangles wrote: »

Be warned - season 1 is quite different from the later seasons, so if you start at the very beginning and don't like it, consider skipping on to the start of season 2. I did that and it really wasn't confusing or difficult to work out what was going on.

I love how the writers changed how Leslie Knope was viewed in season 2. They didn't change her, but they changed the way other characters reacted to her. Nothing she has done, career, community, love, family, has ever appeared to contradict herself. She is one of my favourite TV characters ever!

morgana

Fried green tomatoes at the whistlestop cafe - old but so funny
Steel magnolias - another one in the old and good category

expatinator

i'd second Orphan Black. Some would call the MC reactionary, but that is true to the character. She's lived on the streets and has that cornered animal aspect to her personality.

The sheriffs deputy in Fargo is pretty good, but I think she's the only female character in the entire tv show.

Out of curiousity, what did you think about Uma Thurman in Kill Bill? I didn't think she was the best developed character, but she did break a few gender

Yeah, Sabriel's a great book I also like Lireal as a character.

fits

expatinator wrote: »

The sheriffs deputy in Fargo is pretty good, but I think she's the only female character in the entire tv show.

.

I loved her but yes only female character. Not a representation of real life. Doubt that film would pass the Bechdel test. And I think a few others on here too.

Mad men for example, I just can't watch it, I can't take the treatment of the women in it even if that was the way things were back then. Disclaimer, I haven't watched many.

fits

The Bechdel test
"The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

The Strawman Argument

fits wrote: »

Mad men for example, I just can't watch it, I can't take the treatment of the women in it even if that was the way things were back then. Disclaimer, I haven't watched many.

It starts in 1963, some of the characters make some pretty big steps (personally and/or professionally) over those years in some ways. Hell, even Betty Draper has gradually became a pretty interesting character. Quite a lot of the writers are female, unsure if that was always the case though, it's been seven years since I've seen the first season though and I wasn't too keen on it at the time.
Also, with Don Draper being such a central figure of it, there's some very unlikeable people and situations you've to wade through to get there.
Either way, it's certainly been a hell of a lot more progressive than something like Kill Bill and its exploitation throwback lead imo. Female leads in action movies overall are a bit iffy.



Just thought of a good one! Getting On, can really watch either the BBC or HBO ones, they're very similar. Almost all of the core cast are female, it's created and written by the three leads in the british one and they're very good shows.

I'm just gonna pointlessly mention Enlightened again too.

sunshine and showers

Another vote for The Good Wife and Scandal! Also, How To Get Away With Murder, Pretty Little Liars (for something a bit more silly, but still female-centric).

There are more, I just can't think of them off the top of my head.

ShazGV

^ Oooh, agreed with How To Get Away With Murder. Just watched the first episode last night & now have it on series link. Looks like it's gonna be good!

expatinator

Oh Jackie Brown's an interesting one. Hmm...let me see. Well, it's not a good sign that I have to rack my brain to find good examples of female characterization.

I was very, very impressed with Changeling. Girl Interrupted also, but Angelina Jolie really knocks it out of the park in changeling.

@Fits

I was talking about the TV-Show But it still fits. Which is kind of strange now that you think about it. The tv-show was centered on only a handful of characters, but it did seem to be very male centric. Great Tv-show, but just strange.

Tarzana2

Starscream25 wrote: »

Allison Janey in the West Wing

Allison Janney in EVERYTHING. Love her!

Tarzana2

Think I'll be lambasted for suggesting Sex and the City, but it was one of the first shows I watched that depicted female characters who were flawed and not always good and who made big mistakes and sometimes let people down, but were essentially decent.

Before that it seemed like women were just out-and-out villainous/vindictive bitches or angelic types.

I'm much interested in watching flawed, conflicted female characters than Strong WomenTM.

sunshine and showers

Tarzana2 wrote: »

Think I'll be lambasted for suggesting Sex and the City, but it was one of the first shows I watched that depicted female characters who were flawed and not always good and who made big mistakes and sometimes let people down, but were essentially decent.

Before that it seemed like women were just out-and-out villainous/vindictive bitches or angelic types.

I'm much interested in watching flawed, conflicted female characters than Strong WomenTM.

I seem to watch that show just so I can get angry and frustrated at Carrie! FFS, Carrie, cath a grip!

I love to hate watch it. :P And Miranda RULES!

iguana

Elizabeth in The Americans is a great character. She is a deep cover KGB spy living as an American woman in 1980s Washington with her "husband" Phillip, also a KGB spy, and their two teenage children who think they are ordinary Americans. She kicks ass, is strong, committed and very clever. She is much more commited to Russia than Phillip as he has grown to appreciate what American life offers while it disgusts her which creates a conflict between them. The series explores their marriage as well as their spywork as they have lived as a married couple for nearly 20 years when the series starts and Phillip is very much in love with Elizabeth whereas she is only beginning to fall for him.

The series also has the great female character of Nina, a KGB officer working at the Washington Rezidentura (a legal spy station) who is being blackmailed by the FBI into being a double agent for the US. And the recurring character of Claudia, who is Elizabeth and Phillip's handler.

Tarzana2

sunshine and showers wrote: »

I seem to watch that show just so I can get angry and frustrated at Carrie! FFS, Carrie, cath a grip!

I love to hate watch it. :P And Miranda RULES!

Miranda is my favourite too, and I genuinely believe she is a truly great female character. Very believeable. It helps that Cynthia Nixon is a great actress, a different league to the others.

I like the Carrie character though - hey world, here's a female anti-heroine for ya!

meeeeh

I think SATC was grand until it did not become only about shopping and gettinng happy ending with the one for all the main characters. Even Samantha ends up in a committed relationship.

Lyaiera

Better Off Ted, a comedy with hilarious female characters. Including Portia de Rossi.

Tarzana2

meeeeh wrote: »

I think SATC was grand until it did not become only about shopping and gettinng happy ending with the one for all the main characters. Even Samantha ends up in a committed relationship.

Yeah, season 1-4 is the show's peak.

Dutchess

Game of Thrones has loads. I don't think Brienne of Tarth was mentioned here yet though. I think she is really interesting as a female character. Strong and interesting to watch her be herself and deal with being of noble blood yet not being feminine and pretty in a world that values those attributes greatly in women, especially the high borns.

paperclip2

Showing my age a bit but I loved Tenko http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081944/
Very stiff upper lip.

Shelga

Lorelai Gilmore

The Corinthian

Can anyone suggest decent female antiheros in recent TV or film?

I ask because there's been an explosion in the use of leading male antiheros in recent years, especially in TV, such as Tony Soprano, Walter White, Dexter Morgan and Francis Underwood (US) / Urquhart (UK), but no female equivalents I can think off off-hand, which seems a dreadful omission.