Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is a loose adaptation of the original Greek myths such as that Hercules was legally the descendant of Perseus (who is technically his "half-brother" though Zeus did not have sexual contact with Danae compared with Alcmene) or that Zeus committed adultery with another man's wife. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys has Hera got overly monsterized when Ares is much worse than she is. In fact, she even rejected her own son Ares for being too crude and rude.
So how does Hera get overly monsterized in the TV series? Hera was mostly out of character considering that most of her hatred in the myths was merely focused on Hercules than the world. She does not plague the world and she does care about other mortals. It's just that Hercules ticks her off because his name in Greek (Heracles) is translated into "Hera's Glory". That deeply insults her as to why such a name is given to an illegitimate child of Zeus. While other renditions of Hera as Hercules' jealous big mother (that is the legitimate spouse of your father while you are his child by the mistress) are more in-character, this one actually goes very much out of character to the point she's too much of a bitch.
What the show did was actually give some of Zeus' actions to Hera. If you know in the myths, Zeus was the one who forbade the giving of fire to mankind. It was also Zeus who separated Echidna from her husband Typhon. After reading more about Hera, she wasn't all that bad compared to her son Ares who deserves the role of the show's main antagonist more than she did.
If you read the myths, Hera's first misdeed against Hercules was to put him into a side of insanity so he would kill his own family. This was because of her bitter rage and what was needed was that Hercules should perform the Twelve Labors. She decided to make every labor more difficult than the last, even though she sent a crab to try and distract Hercules from fighting the Hydra. After the Twelve labors, she did settle down a bit and somehow decided to call it a truce. Later on, Hercules would rescue her from the titan Portheryon which effectively called a truce between them.
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