In the first show I created I would say that, apart from the awful guest characters, everyone is pretty likeable. They each have a specific "screw up factor" which means they'll never be huge successes but they are not unpleasant. For the main character, I had in mind a relatable everyman such as Michael Bluth from Arrested Development or Jim from The Office US. The sympathy the audience feels for these characters is a "way in" for them to experience and relate to being surrounded by incompetents and crazies.
However, one person who read my script said that this main protag lacked a distinct character.
On James Cary's blog he talks about the importance of the central character's needs so I'm going to try to give him more specific goals - though I don't think he'll ever become an absurdly exaggerated monster like Jill from Nighty Night or South Park's Cartman.
http://sitcomgeek.blogspot.com/2011/12/central-character-needs-work.html
It's possible I'll have to exaggerate some negative qualities of the other main characters to make them more needy, more selfish, more likely to generate problems.
Now, with another idea for a show that I've recently started on I feel like I have the opposite problem. All the characters by definition have some kind of mental health problem. I've sketched out some dialogue between a feminist (persecution complex) sex pest (erotomania) and a conspiracy theorist (whatever it is those guys have) but it seems a bit... cold.
I wonder if anyone here has actively gone through the process of making characters more likeable and relatable?
