Lead roles that don't have romance/dating storylines in Non-Romance genres

[gkelly]

I've been watching a lot of Korean TV dramas in the past two years. A lot of them are primarily romance stories or have strong secondary plotlines about romance.

But some don't. Examples that come to mind that have at least one main character who is unmarried, and little to no dating involved:
Misaeng
My Mister
Stranger/Forest of Secrets
Law School
Squid Game

In English-language shows, I watch many mystery series include unmarried detectives who are primarily focused on solving crimes and rarely or never pursue romantic relationships. In some cases they may have ex-spouses or ex-lovers that they sometimes interact with, especially if they have offspring, or they get involved with someone for a while but outcome of the relationship ends up being negative in one way or another, certainly not a lesson that single people are incomplete until they're partnered.

The same can be true of mystery book series (or standalone novels), as some examples have been mentioned above.

Similarly with ensemble shows like Orange Is the New Black or Call the Midwife. Yes, various characters hook up at various times, but that's generally incidental to the main storylines.

 

[Prancer]

I think it's rather difficult to come up with titles with those parameters, so I started thinking about movies with female protagonists where romance isn't a factor--or at least not a primary factor.

Does Fargo count? Marge is married and pregnant, but that's not the focus of her role. Similarly, Hidden Figures. The women get married and have children, but the point is their work.

Never Let Me Go

Winter's Bone

The Descent

No Exit (caveat--I read the book and haven't seen the movie, but I can't imagine that there is a lot of romance in the movie)

Never Let Me Go

The Runaways

Alien

Kill Bill

Million Dollar Baby

The River Wild

Norma Rae

There are also anti-romance movies, like Kramer vs. Kramer, The Hours, Revolutionary Road, etc.

I'm sure I will think of some more tomorrow.

 

[cygnus]

I remember seeing A Few Good Men many years ago, and that the two "dateable" stars Tom Cruise and Demi Moore play lawyers who work together and butt heads but do NOT get romantically involved. I thought at the time that it was quite refreshing.

 

[MsZem]

I started to list them but there were so many.

The Stephanie Plum series
The Kinsey Milhone series

I checked out after book 7 or so, but Stephanie was seeing people (or maybe just Morelli) on and off throughout those books.

Speaking of Denzel Washington, I don't think there was any romance in The Pelican Brief, was there? If memory serves, the main character and the professor who got killed in the car bomb were involved but that was it, I believe.

IIRC the characters do end up together in the book, or are at least interested in each other. It's been a long time since I read it, though.

There's plenty of science fiction without a central romance, but the narrators are not necessarily human (e.g. Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, maybe Murderbot though I've only read the first one) or may be largely on their own with no other humans around (Andy Weir's The Martian and Project Hail Mary). John Scalzi's Redshirts and Lock In/Head On don't have a romance subplot for the (human) main characters. But other than The Martian, I don't think any of these have movie versions at this point.

 

[Prancer]

I checked out after book 7 or so, but Stephanie was seeing people (or maybe just Morelli) on and off throughout those books.

The love triangle in the series is one of the main story lines.

Kinsey Millhone, OTOH, is a loner. Carlotta Carlyle? Lisbeth Sanders? V.I. Warshawski?

 

[MacMadame]

I watch many mystery series include unmarried detectives

Sherlock Holmes!

All the Agatha Christies. All the books I've read take place over a short period of time and the relationships don't change generally so the single people don't couple up. (There are a few gray areas in one or two books.) Plus Poirot never dated and neither did Miss Marple.

I only read one Temperance Brennan book but there wasn't anything romantic in it that I remember. I know the tv show did.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series

What about the Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell? I don't remember if there was romance in that but I don't think there was much, if at all.

I checked out after book 7 or so, but Stephanie was seeing people (or maybe just Morelli) on and off throughout those books.

Sometimes. There are whole books where it doesn't come up.

On the Sci-Fi front we have:
Silent Running
The Martian
Gravity
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

In YA we have:
Harriet the Spy
The Diary of Anne Frank
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and probably all the Roald Dahl books)
A Series of Unfortunate Events

General:
A Miracle Worker

Okay, I could keep going but I have stuff to do

 

[once_upon]

I'm thinking the TV series, the Equalizer, doesn't focus on romance. Although Queen Latifa's character has had a child, the ex is not a big part of the story. She is the main character, who is a fierce avenger for righteousness.

 

[Cachoo]

I am a big fan of the series "The Bridge" and have seen the British and American versions. But I think that first season of the original in Sweden/Denmark was excellent. The female detective is a most interesting character. She is certainly a loner and not at all interested in romance although she has an occasional night of sex. And even there she doesn't flirt---it seems transactional. "Want to have sex?" That is as "romance" as it gets which is no romance at all.

Also have you seen "Pleasantville?" Reese Witherspoon is a boy crazy teenager and her character undergoes an interesting (and refreshing) change once she is in Pleasantville.

 

[LeafOnTheWind]

I started a grid last night so I can start summarizing the types of storylines available for single people interacting with other people without romantic entanglements being the primary focus. I will have to finish this after work today. I pretty much stopped at page 1 and will look at page 2 and on later.

Title	Format	Gender	Main Genre	Summary
Murder She Wrote	TV Series	Female	Crime/Mystery	Solves a crime/mystery
Terminator	Movie	Non-Human	Action	Hero saves a child
Mandalorian	TV Series	Male	Science Fiction	Hero saves a child
Silence of the Lambs	Movie	Female	Crime/Mystery	Solves a crime/mystery
John Wick	Movie	Male	Action	Revenge killing spree
Frozen	Movie	Female	Animation	Couple saves the sad lonely queen
Doctor Who	TV Series	Non-human	Science Fiction	Lonely man on adventures with companions
Summer's Lease	TV Series	Female	Crime/Mystery	Solves a crime/mystery
Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series	Books	Female	Crime/Mystery	Solves a crime/mystery
Equalizer (Denzel)	Movie	Male	Action	Revenge/killing spree
Equalizer (Queen Latifah)	TV Series	Female	Action	Revenge/killing spree(?) not sure about killing spree because it's a tv series

I honestly don't know if we can call Doctor Who non-binary now that we have a female doctor. Is he/she really non-binary in either form? I didn't have access to the show when Jodie Whitaker took over so I don't know how she is playing the Doctor. Either way he/she is alien and not human.

So far single people can solve crimes, save kids, go on killing sprees or be saved by people who aren't sad and lonely with an overabundance of women solving crimes. Elsa and Doctor Who both have an oversized emphasis on how lonely they are. It's true for anyone that you can get lonely but that's not the main characteristic I want people thinking about when you are doing stories on single individuals. I did a quick scan of page 2 and am almost afraid to continue the grid. But that will have to wait until after work today.

 

[skategal]

There is another genre I thought about and it is the single parent with kids sitcom where if a romantic lead was brought in it would ruin the show.

One Day at a Time, Kate and Allie, Who’s the Boss, Different Strokes, Silver Spoons, The Nanny

Some of these did romance in their final seasons when they knew they weren’t being renewed but most of the series didn’t focus on romance. The focus was child rearing.

I also thought of some older shows from the past that didn’t focus on dating/romance.

Gilligan’s Island was one.

Two Canadian male dominated shows from the past that had little to no romantic plot lines were: The Beachcombers (adventures in coastal BC) and Due South (K-9 Mountie stationed in Chicago with US detective partner.) The lead on Due South was so HAWT too (Paul Gross.)

Eta I disagree about Elsa, I think she saved herself.

 

[skategal]

I meant to add another one….the last 3 Star Wars movies had no romantic plot for the main characters.

Rey and Ben didn’t become a couple or hook up.

So female Jedi is another category.

 

[kwanfan1818]

100% of action movies that I can currently think of have a romantic interest subplot. Why is it there at all? I need a lead action hero that doesn't have one.

In The Hunt for Red October, at least the movie, there is no romantic sub-plot for Jack Ryan. I know he's married, but that never stopped action heros.

 

[made_in_canada]

There is another genre I thought about and it is the single parent with kids sitcom where if a romantic lead was brought in it would ruin the show.

One Day at a Time, Kate and Allie, Who’s the Boss, Different Strokes, Silver Spoons, The Nanny

Some of these did romance in their final seasons when they knew they weren’t being renewed but most of the series didn’t focus on romance. The focus was child rearing.

I also thought of some older shows from the past that didn’t focus on dating/romance.

Gilligan’s Island was one.

Two Canadian male dominated shows from the past that had little to no romantic plot lines were: The Beachcombers (adventures in coastal BC) and Due South (K-9 Mountie stationed in Chicago with US detective partner.) The lead on Due South was so HAWT too (Paul Gross.)

Eta I disagree about Elsa, I think she saved herself.

Due South was amazing. And yes, Paul Gross was HAWT. I’d love to rewatch that series.

 

[skategal]

Due South was amazing. And yes, Paul Gross was HAWT. I’d love to rewatch that series.

I adore Paul Gross. So good.

 

[MacMadame]

They don't count because they were in space or on a hostile planet alone. There was no one to date. I'm sure if they had been trapped with someone they would have put in someone of the opposite sex and we would have had a sex scene at some point. It would count if they were trapped with someone in their field of play and sex didn't happen at all.

In Gravity, there was an entire crew and once they died, two people worked together to survive. A man and a woman with no romance let alone sex before he kicked the bucket.

 

[slicekw]

hey @mpal2 don't forget to add any Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot movie or series. Poirot, especially, is a poster child for someone that won't find romance.

On Amazon: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Reacher are both series where romance isn't the goal of the primary characters and any liason is considered non-essential to the character or plot. Hanna.

Anything from Marvel, even WandaVision (so far).

BTW, I think Never Let Me Go is about the love triangle more than anything else in the story - the very nature of their lives being stunted played out on stunting the lead character's romantic attachment. Sorry, @Prancer, I gotta disagree there.

playing off @Cachoo's suggestion of Pleasantville is The Virgin Suicides. The narrator is in love with the main character, but she's not available to be in love.


Books - most of the leads in Charles DeLint's books (Urban Fantasy). Any classic SF writer's ignored romance.

 

[LeafOnTheWind]

In Gravity, there was an entire crew and once they died, two people worked together to survive. A man and a woman with no romance let alone sex before he kicked the bucket.

Wasn't he a hallucination of a crew member? It's been awhile since I've seen the movie.

And the reason I am excluding it is because I specifically was looking for storylines that would normally put the people together as a couple but did not. I can't think of any reason why astronauts trapped in space are going to focus on sex.

I am excluding buddy type movies/books or other similar story lines because they aren't meant to date. I am specifically looking for roles that would normally be written as coupling up and refreshingly did not.

So that is probably too limiting because they just don't do that in books or movies too often. That's my biggest problem with a lot of these. I just want to see them go against type. It very often feels like writers and movie makers are going to stick in a dating relationship in every story that has a chance for it to make sense to include. I just want to see some of those stories without dating.

 

[Cachoo]

I read Station Eleven and watched the fine series on HBOMAX. The lead is a young woman and we see her in the present and for some of her childhood. This is actually a hopeful series about life after a deadly pandemic. I loved it in print and on the television. And romance is not a part of this.

84 Charing Cross Road is about a deep, twenty year friendship created through letters between a British bookseller and an American woman searching for hard-to-find British titles. This was a book, play and movie---only saw the movie but I loved it.

Iron Jawed Angels is my favorite Hilary Swank film. There is a bare hint of a relationship in this but as Alice Paul burned most of her letters I think this is window dressing. She was close to both women and men over the course of her life.

Bagdad Cafe is an old favorite that is more focused on how two very different women help each other at an old motel in the middle of nowhere. I thought it was a true charmer and particularly liked the German lead in this film. I think if the film continued on for part two there might be romance but this is more about adapting to something new.

 

[VALuvsMKwan]

I read Station Eleven and watched the fine series on HBOMAX. The lead is a young woman and we see her in the present and for some of her childhood. This is actually a hopeful series about life after a deadly pandemic. I loved it in print and on the television. And romance is not a part of this.

84 Charing Cross Road is about a deep, twenty year friendship created through letters between a British bookseller and an American woman searching for hard-to-find British titles. This was a book, play and movie---only saw the movie but I loved it.

Iron Jawed Angels is my favorite Hilary Swank film. There is a bare hint of a relationship in this but as Alice Paul burned most of her letters I think this is window dressing. She was close to both women and men over the course of her life.

Bagdad Cafe is an old favorite that is more focused on how two very different women help each other at an old motel in the middle of nowhere. I thought it was a true charmer and particularly liked the German lead in this film. I think if the film continued on for part two there might be romance but this is more about adapting to something new.

I love this movie so much, and the haunting song from it, "Calling You", was levels of power better than "Let the River Run" from "Working Girl", which won the Oscar for Best Song that year.

 

[MsZem]

Wasn't he a hallucination of a crew member? It's been awhile since I've seen the movie.

There's one scene where it's an hallucination, otherwise they're actually interacting.

Adding to Prancer's list of movies with female protagonists, I haven't actually seen Zero Dark Thirty but I don't think there's a romance subplot for Jessica Chastain's character?

And adding to my list of romance-free science fiction novels: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

In Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (starting with his Majesty's Dragon), Lawrence occasionally hooks up with another officer, but for the most part he's on his own and the main relationship is the one he has with his dragon.

I love this movie so much, and the haunting song from it, "Calling You", was levels of power better than "Let the River Run" from "Working Girl", which won the Oscar for Best Song that year.

Let the River Run is awesome, and it also helps that it was played during the opening credits and ending, both of which are iconic.

Don't get me started on Dos Oruguitas not winning this year, however. How dare they.

 

[Prancer]

So far single people can solve crimes, save kids, go on killing sprees or be saved by people who aren't sad and lonely with an overabundance of women solving crimes.

What kinds of things do you think dating or married people do in movies and books? There has to be some sort of drama to drive the story. "Person happily going though normal day" isn't going to generate a lot of interest.

If we're going to go into literature, loneliness/separation is one of the major themes of modern and postmodern literature, so everyone is going to be lonely, regardless of relationship status. A lot of modern and contemporary literature is anti-romance in the sense that if people are in relationships, the relationships are unfulfilling at best and often toxic--not always true, but often enough.

@MsZem, seeing Zero Dark Thirty reminds me of something I thought last night--that some of my examples were about fiction based on fact, which probably has something to do with why there isn't a lot of romance involved.

 

[kwanfan1818]

I haven't seen the new James Bond movies, but I don't remember "M" having romantic involvements, and the latest "M" is Judy Dench, no?

 

[MsZem]

I haven't seen the new James Bond movies, but I don't remember "M" having romantic involvements, and the latest "M" is Judy Dench, no?

No, it's Ralph Fiennes.

 

[PrincessLeppard]

I haven't seen The Walking Dead since Glenn died, but Daryl and Carol never hooked up despite the fans calling for it. That may have changed, but I hope not. I loved their friendship.

 

[Cachoo]

My favorite film of all time is “Local Hero” and here is why: The main character is sent to a beautiful coastal town in GBritain to make way for a big American oil company.

If we had the traditional Hollywood film Mac (the lead) would fall in love with a local lass who would show him the error of his American ways and he would join the townsfolk to fight evil American oil.
NONE of this happens and the movie is so delightfully surprising in so many ways. If you would tell me that my fave film would not have the traditional romance we usually see I would not have believed you. And yet this film is a gem (to me at least.) It fits this thread’s criteria.

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Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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[genevieve]

And the reason I am excluding it is because I specifically was looking for storylines that would normally put the people together as a couple but did not. I can't think of any reason why astronauts trapped in space are going to focus on sex.

I mean, my big complaint is when films or books put a focus on romance where there isn't any logical reason to - which is why it is surprising that that film did not make the remaining 2 at least have some sort of romantic focus.

 

[ballettmaus]

Moana is another Disney character who isn't looking for love. And while I haven't seen Encanto, I believe Miranda isn't either, is she? In theory, Mickey Mouse has been single for almost 100 years, too

 

[Desperado]

My favourite Disney character is Princess Merida from Brave. No love interest there.

Another woman detective is in the series Vera, she's quite the hermit though, played by Brenda Blethyn. Would you view her character as datable? Have to mention that I'm still annoyed at the "friend" who told me Vera reminded her of me, so...

The lead in the French TV series Capitaine Marleau moves from city to city with only brief sexual encounters we don't see, again, the datable part is up in the air. Funny thing about the series, they made a figure skating episode where a group performed Swan Lake on Ice at a rink-a-dink rink and a skater gets killed à la "Nancy vs Tonya" and it was hilarious.

How about Star Trek Picard? I haven't finished watching season 2 and they were talking about his hiding from romance, but I don't think they'll go there.

 

[kwanfan1818]

Another woman detective is in the series Vera, she's quite the hermit though, played by Brenda Blethyn. Would you view her character as datable?

In TV world? No. Because all of the men her age on other police series are in relationships with the hot young female detectives or foresic scientists, often after their same-age, but glamorous wives, leave them.

And it's rare that the not-suffering-fools women find someone worthy, anyway.

 

[kedrin]

Another woman detective is in the series Vera, she's quite the hermit though, played by Brenda Blethyn.

Oh- that reminds me: Secrets and Lies, also starring Brenda Blethyn (one of my favorites). No romance anywhere in sight. Great film.