What? Futurama has a really likable cast. Fry's like a young Homer Simpson from the early episodes on The Simpsons; he's an honest, sweet guy can't help that he does stupid things, but often he really wishes he could. Leela's firm as a captain, but very emotional as a person. Bender can be cruel certainly, but he's a robot and he does care about certain things, albeit ones which seem strange to humans (becoming a Globetrotter, for instance, or stalking Calculon). The Professor and Zoidberg might fall a bit into your statement of good characters who get tortured, but they turn out OK and happy too much of the time for it to be mean-spirited (and with the Professor at least, a lot of the torture he ends up inflicting upon himself). And what are you saying about no effort to make the show better? The writers are constantly working to improve Futurama. The second season featured stronger satires than the wackiness of the first season, the third started developing the characters with some more emotional episodes, and the fourth season introduced more of an epic ongoing storyline which the movies only seem to be expanding upon rapidly.