Merlin

So I'm going to voice what is an unpopular opinion here and say I think Uther Pendragon is actually... kind of an okay guy. He's never going to be a hero, and I have no desire to go find a mountaintop from which to sing his praises, but I don't think he's the villain a lot of people paint him as.I think the reason a lot of people dislike him (aside from his stance on magic, which I will get to, but I wanted to address this first) is the fact that in the show he makes a lot of decisions that are logical and pragmatic, and in many cases the right choice, but they don't sit well emotionally. For an example of this take episode 1.10: Merlin's mother comes to Camelot to beg Uther to free their town from a group of bandits that have been harassing them. The immediate visceral reaction is a desire to see her be helped, a desire that is only compounded by the fact that she is the protagonist's mother. Therefore, when Uther refuses to help, he looks like a massive jerk. But here's the thing: Hunith is basically asking Uther to send a squad of his troops into another kingdom, which I'm pretty sure is fairly high up on the list of things to do if you want to start a war. This means he'd be risking starting a war, which would cost thousands of lives in both countries in order to save a village of about 30 people. And I'm sorry if it sounds heartless, but it is just not worth the risk.Now, as far as his stance on magic goes, he's definitely wrong. He committed genocide, and that's terrible. But here's the thing, Uther genuinely believes that all magic users are evil and want nothing more than to destroy Camelot. His beliefs might come from a personal place and out of misplaced blame, but the fact remains that he did what he did not because of some out of control vendetta, but because he truly believed he was protecting the innocent, law-abiding citizens of his realm. And that's a lot more than I can say for most the magic users on this show.