“The protagonist must be empathetic (whether or not he is sympathetic).”
— Robert McKee (1997) 1
I think there is no better embodiment of this principal (that you don’t have to like a character for their characterisation to be successful) than David Brent.
- McKee, Robert, (1997), ‘The substance of story’ in Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting, New York, USA: HarperCollins, pp. 135-154 ↩