Charlie Harding

Charlie is Jen Harding's teenage son, the older of her two boys, trying to carry on with school and friends while his family reels from his father's sudden death. He plays it cool on the surface—headphones in, jokes ready—but the loss sits close under the surface, flaring up in flashes of anger or numbness.

Sam McCarthy plays Charlie with the specific awkwardness of a teenager who hasn't been given the tools to grieve out loud, so it leaks out sideways in sarcasm and distance. The show doesn't treat him as comic relief so much as a quietly accurate portrait of a kid trying to look unaffected while clearly falling apart.