Whenever I see people talking about what makes good female characters, their advice always seems to fall along the same lines: give lady characters their own agency, friends, and family; a variety of realistic body types and clothes are nice; try not to rape and/or kill them just so male characters can have a reason to get their revenge on.

I've been watching Green Wing, and would like to add something to that list: unglamorous negative personality traits make for good times! By glamorous negative, I mean exaggerated cliches like "the bitch", "the slut", "the evil witch" etc. Those are dull. But every single female character in Green Wing is absolutely lolarious, because of all the shit they get up to. They're sarcastic and stroppy and slightly mad and funny (how often are the ladies the comedy instead of the straightman?), and it is fab.

tl;dr: Sue White is queen of everything (contains bad language and the best onscreen tension ever)