I was planning yesterday and I asked myself a question which, I would like to know what other people think.

Killing of the main character in a show. I can see the many pros and cons of it and personally feel that if it is handled in the right way a show can still work, but what are other peoples opinions of this?

Killing off the main character seems to be a perfectly viable option to me. I would point to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The character of Sarah Connor is one of the main reasons the show is stagnating - killing her off would be both shocking and would allow the series to regenerate into something, hopefully, better. It would also allow the network to rebrand the product, most likely T: The John Connor Chronicles, or maybe just Terminator, and separate the new show from TSCC, which is rapidly declining in the ratings.

The Cons: anyone really invested in Sarah Connor might abandon the show. But if the show is going to be cancelled anyway, it seems better to go for the show-refit.

Heck, the narrator of "Desperate housewives" is a character who died before the show even started. :)

If done well then it can be great. You can explore the effects the death has on the other characters then :)

Thanks for the views, I think it would be very interesting to explore the impacts. I think it's definatly going to be something that I keep in mind when writing my script.

What kind of show are we talking here? Do you plan a long running series or a single or mini-series? In the second case I guess it is possible to kill the lead character, even if he is what carries the story along, in the end. It leaves a bitter taste, but that can be why people like it. Coffee is bitter as well, that's what people drink it for.

For a long running show, I wouldn't do it. You can kill important additional cast members, like team-mates, even the best friend, but not the lead. Joss Whedon killed Wash and Shepherd Book in his Serenity-Movie. That's bitter, but a continuation of "Firefly" would still be possible without them. But if he killed Mal ... no way. Same for Torchwood. They eliminated Owen and Tosh, okay, but without Jack Harkness, the show would just be dead. I guess what I mean is: even if you have a strong cast of several important characters, there still is always one lead, one person without whom the whole thing does not work. Gibbs in NCIS, Buffy in Buffy, John Crighton in Farscape etc.

The only exception to that is the classic cop/detective show with a team of two. Starsky and Hutch, Mulder and Scully, Body and Doyle, Simon and Simon etc. There you can kill neither, because the whole thing lives from the friendly banter and the buddie factor (with a bit of luring romance in most cases). If you take that away, the show is a bust.

Then again: this is ScriptFrenzy. It is the place to try things that have not been done before.

The first thing that came to my mind in reading this was "Twin Peaks." The entire premise of the show - at least the first season - was "Who killed Laura Palmer?" The show wouldn't have worked without her, and she washed up as a dead body on a beach in the second scene.

As long as you have other characters the audience can attach to, I wouldn't think that would be a problem. Kill off the only good character in your show, things might be bad.

Off topic, if you're the same cez who hangs around the 2YN boards, I greet you warmly.

In the pilot of "Lost," Jack Shephard, the heroic doctor figure, was killed off. When J.J. Abrams came along, he realized what a gold mine the character offered the show in the long term, so he kept him as the heroic main figure. As a spec pilot, probably a bold - and unexpected - thing to do, killing your best good guy, but for the long haul, not so good. I remember the pilot of "The Shield" killed off a character (played by Reed Diamond of "Homicide" and "Dollhouse"), who was a detective that Mackey whacked in the final moments. Stunning, both because the main character killed another cop, and also because Diamond was wholly recognizable as a recurring character-type - so double-whammy there.

If you plan to do something like that, go for it. Hope this helps.

If it's a pilot, killing off a main character and not bringing them back in flashbacks or some other way would make their role more backstory for the main characters so they wouldn't be main characters at all.

In my pilot, I have an ensemble crew that gets rearranged so that a couple "new guys" join up at the end and two long-time crewmembers leave, but the idea is that the leaving crew members will become part of on-going story arcs. That means they never were main characters, but are recurring characters with extensive backstories with the main characters.

In Stargate SG-1, the character Kowalsky had backstory with Jack O'Neill. He was in the Stargate movie and they served together in the Special Forces. He died in the third episode, which was an extension of the two-parter Pilot. I think it was useful to have an SG-1 team member die (even if the team hadn't completely formed yet) early to underscore the danger of their enemy since killing off a truly main character is problematic for a series. When they'd do alternate realities/timelines, Kowalsky was alive and it was a reminder of how dangerous the job was.

To sum up, kill off someone who in every way does the same job as your main character as the series opens. It's good backstory and it's a good way to underscore danger without really ticking off the fans of the series by killing a truly main character.

If you're talking about spec'ing someone else's series, NEVER kill off a main character.

Yeah if you’re writing a spec script (and planning to submit it) then never kill of an existing character of course in general I wouldn’t advice anyone to submit a spec script but that’s just me.

In general terms though if you’re killing a character off in the pilot or within the first few episodes they aren’t really a central character. There are numerous seasons where an important character has died in the pilot or before the pilot to set up the story arc for the season - Veronica Mars, Desperate Housewives and Twin Peaks all spring to mind but the characters killed where never central or leads.

The idea of killing off someone who appears to be in place as a central member of the cast isn’t in itself a bad idea though.

Spooks in the UK achieved massive publicity for doing just that in their second or third episode, although the nature of the death (deep fried if I remember right) probably had something to do with that as well! 24 is another show that built its name on killing off everyone and anyone - except for its lead of course. Having the anything can happen and anyone is expendable feel to the show can keep viewers hooked. However a word of warning don’t become Heroes, if you’re going to kill characters make sure they stay dead. You can get away with bringing one character back from the dead but not all of them.

Another word of warning, try not to kill of the only character(s) people will like. So if you have a character who is clearly the best or strongest part of the show try to avoid killing them because it becomes very hard for people to want to come back for more.