Private Military Contractors / Live-Action TV

• 24: The seventh season has the Starkwood corporation, who, among other things, give weapons to genocidal African rebels in exchange for permission to use innocent villagers for weapons testing and plan attacks on American soil to get Senate investigations off their backs.
• In American Odyssey, a PMC named OSELA features in the pilot. Their troops don't much care for adherence to rules of engagement or for basic courtesies between regular US forces and mercs.
• Arrow reinvents the Blackhawks as this, possibly because they're an existing DC military team whose name already sounds a bit like "Blackwater".
• Babylon 5:
  • One episode features a group of Raiders acting as one for a rogue Centauri nobleman. In the end, they betray him, as they know they can't fight the military of the Centauri Republic (a Vestigial Empire but still a superpower), but get offed by the Shadows before they can do more than tell their employer about it. The Expanded Universe mentions that Raider groups will sometimes hire themselves out to various governments, effectively acting like this.
  • The Belt Alliance started as a union for workers in the asteroid belt that armed themselves to fight against Raiders and PMC groups working for companies trying to take their mines. After First Contact, the Belt Alliance evolved into a sort of shipping company/shipping union hybrid (with the single largest privately owned merchant fleet in the galaxy, as most of Earth's merchants work for them), while their armed forces continued fighting Raiders, both to defend Belt Alliance shipping and as PMC for other companies. It's mentioned that, in spite of their antiquated equipment (limited to light weapons by Earth Alliance law), they are very effective against Raiders due to having focused all their weapons on killing fighters, with the very presence of Belt Alliance escorts keeping away the smarter ones.
• Burn Notice: One episode's villain, Ryder Stahl, is the owner of a company called Security Associates. Mike's cover ID was of a Kenyan diamond dealer who needs a village... removed.
• Cannon: In "A Flight of Hawks", Cannon's investigation leads him to a band of mercenaries who are planning to kick off a brushwar in Africa.
• Castle: A couple episodes of deal with the villain of the week using mercenaries.
• Criminal Minds: The UnSub of one episode is a Cold Sniper who initially appears to be a Serial Killer, but is in fact a mercenary who is making his kills look like a serial killer to mislead authorities, tracking down a battered wife who is in hiding. However, the real villain of the episode is her husband and the sniper's boss, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who works for the powerful and politically tied mercenary company "Black Cross", he actually manages to be less sympathetic than the actual killer.
• Damages: The main antagonists in the fourth season are the owner of a mercenary firm called High Star, yet another Blackwater Brand X, and a corrupt CIA agent who he did black-ops work for.
• In FlashForward (2009), one set of antagonists are a PMC called Jericho.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Davos hires his old friend, the notorious pirate Salladhor Saan, to provide additional ships for Stannis Baratheon. In Season 4, he also proposes hiring the expensive Golden Company to aid in Stannis' war.
  • Daenerys goes to Astapor to purchase Unsullied, eunuch slaves who are considered the finest soldiers in the world. Later she also meets up with the Second Sons, one of the many "Free Companies" utilized by the various cities and states of Essos.
  • Westeros is also filled with independent sellswords and hedge knights who bounce from job to job, most notably Tyrion's lancer Bronn. In fact, Bronn is eventually knighted as "Ser Bronn of the Blackwater"! Though this is just a funny coincidence and not an intentional reference to the real-life PMC...
  • After being exiled from Westeros as a fugitive, Jorah became a sellsword and served with the legendary Golden Company for a while, before meeting Daenerys.
• Highlander had a plot with an immortal using his private army to invade the house of a friend of Tessa's after the guy's son raped the immortal's (adopted) daughter.
• Jericho (2006): During the first season, the PMC Ravenwood tries to loot the town of Jericho (and successfully raids the nearby towns of Rogue River and New Bern). In season 2, it is learned that they are a subsidiary of the Evil, Inc. Big Bad, Jennings & Rall.
• In Kamen Rider Build, Namba Heavy Industries manages to be this with their Guardians, mass-produced Mecha-Mooks that they're willing to give use of to anyone with enough money to buy them. They later expand into selling use of Riders and Kaisers to the highest bidder, with the intent being to mass produce those and sell them to the highest bidder. Of course they kept the strongest version, the Hard Guardians, reserved for their own private use. It's to the point a large portion of the armies of every single faction in the war is composed entirely of Guardians given to them by Namba. In fact, the entire reason Namba helped start the Civil War in the first place was precisely because of that.
• Knight Rider 2008: The villains of the pilot episode are from the really shamelessly transparent "Blackriver" corporation, an organization of evil US military contractors. It's not exactly clear how stealing the control codes for a US military satellite and selling them on the black market to enemies of the US, when the FBI knows from the start that you're the ones behind it, plays into this business model. You would think that sort of thing would be bad for business.
• The Last Ship features a rare heroic example. Tex Nolan is a contractor who joins the Nathan James's crew at Guantanamo, where his company had been hired to guard Al-Qaeda prisoners. His past is a bit ambiguous, though he's actually from Reno, is a single father, is former US military (it's implied that he was with Army Special Operations Forces), and signed up for the Gitmo contract because it was easy money. Tex is friendly, happy-go-lucky, and an all-around good guy. He just happens to be very good at doing bad things to bad people. He's also very scrupulous about who he's willing to shoot.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In "Boots on the Ground", the Victim of the Week is an activist who has been infiltrating two rival private contractors. This leaves plenty of suspects with military training.
• Leverage: In "The Homecoming Job", the Villain of the Week is a PMC Blackwater Expy that shot up a group of US Army reservists. Their client was one of the wounded soldiers who was unable to pay for his medical expenses. While it's initially assumed that the reason for the shooting was simply that the mercenaries panicked, it's later found that the company was actually stealing money from Iraq and using it to bribe a Congressman in order to continue to be given no-bid contracts.
• Madam Secretary: "Another Benghazi" has Vesuvian, a PMC that Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord had criticized in an article she wrote in her academic career for being too quick on the trigger, but whom she is now forced to hire as extra security for the US embassy in Yemen after Congress won't spring for Green Berets. Then the embassy is bombed and Arabic-language news blames Vesuvian for shooting first. Reconstruction in the end: Vesuvian didn't shoot first and actually saved the ambassador's life by getting him out before the bomb went off, and the CEO of the company credits McCord's article for prompting him to make several changes in company policy to cut down on civilian casualties.
• NCIS has to deal with PMCs from time to time. This includes busting one of their commanders for illegal bounty hunting.
• The Night Agent: Turn Lake Industries is a company with this work, mostly in the Balkans.
• The Night Manager: Roper has a small army of mercenaries in his employ from across the world, whom he calls the "real United Nations".
• In Occupation, a drama set during the Iraq War, an ex-British army soldier teams up with an American to form a PMC, which recruits another character.
• Person of Interest:
  • In "Nautilus", the number of the week is hunted by a "Private Military Contractor" group known as "Silverpool". Reese even mentions Blackwater when describing them.
  • In "Wingman", Blackwater is name-dropped again as the former employers of "Egret".
  • Mr. Dillinger, Reese's predecessor as "The Man in the Suit", is former Blackwater. This is clearly done for Rule of Symbolism as he is Only in It for the Money and tries to sell out Harold Finch.
  • Decima Technologies is a private intelligence agency who are introduced as a Villain of the Week stealing secrets for the Chinese but turn out to be an Arc Villain hoping to take control of The Machine (and later Samaritan). While at first this appears to be to corner the market in selling information, they actually want to establish a Deus est Machina for reasons based on ideology rather than profit.
• The Philanthropist: One episode has a corrupt group of mercenaries deliberately sabotaging peace efforts in Kosovo in order to sell arms. The rest of the PMC is not corrupt, however, and fires the corrupt ones when presented with evidence.
• The Professionals: Bodie is a former mercenary. This provides the basis for the plot in a couple of episodes.
• The Punisher (2017): Billy Russo, after leaving the Marines, started a military contractor firm called Anvil, and he recruits former soldiers to serve as his operatives and do wetwork for Rawlins.
• Stargate SG-1: This is technically Teal'c's status, to make it legally possible for him to join the team. He's actually an alien freedom fighter, but on paper, he's a security contractor at Cheyenne Mountain. This also gives him an official job and paycheck, allowing him to start living in an off-base apartment while letting people think he's an African immigrant rather than an extraterrestrial one.
• The Unit featured a company called "Blackthorne", which tried to recruit one of the members.
• True Detective: In season 2, Woodrugh is a former member of a private military contractor and served in Iraq. It's implied that he committed war crimes while there. Other members of his outfit get involved in the case he's investigating, and he's not happy to see them.