Lester Nygaard (Fargo)

"But... What am I supposed to do? Heck, you're so sure about it, maybe you should just kill him for me." (Fargo, "The Crocodile's Dilemma")

Lester Nygaard, played by Martin Freeman, is one of the main characters of the first season of the anthology show, Fargo. Due to the show's unique format, it would be hard to definitively label him as the protagonist above Lorne Malvo or Molly Solverson. Lester begins the series as a put-upon middle-management loser, with a subpar job and a nagging wife. After killing her, he falls into a spiral of regret and narcissism.

What makes Lester interesting is that he begins as a truly sympathetic character. Much like Walter White at the beginning of Breaking Bad, the audience can feel a pang of sympathy for the way that his life has hit an anticlimactic dead-end. Unlike Walter White, however, when Lester hits his turning point and undergoes his transformation, he doesn't become a slowly-hardened criminal badass. He remains a pathetic, despicable, small man, leading the audience to slowly realise that maybe his wife was correct. The acts he performs that leave the audience somewhat satisfied in the first episode are slowly shown to be not the desperate reaching out a man who deserves more, but rather the disgusting self-preservation of a petty, selfish villain.