Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster

Bertie Wooster is a young, wealthy London bachelor who fills his days with clubs, cocktails, and scrapes largely of his own making. Amiable, scatterbrained, and utterly devoted to his friends, he wants only to avoid marriage-minded aunts, furious fiancées, and any activity resembling responsibility. Fortunately, he has a manservant who is rather cleverer than he is.

Hugh Laurie plays daftness as a kind of grace: Bertie is never mocked for his silliness, only adored for it, and Laurie's physical comedy — the flailing limbs, the strangled vocabulary, the sheer sunny confidence in his own bad ideas — turns a upper-class twit into someone genuinely lovable, a man whose good heart survives every idiotic scheme intact.