Dixon

Dixon is the Hale family's devoted maidservant, a fixture of their genteel southern household long before the story begins. She dotes on Mrs Hale above all, treats Margaret with a mix of fondness and exasperation, and views the family's uprooting to industrial Milton with open, sniffing disapproval.

Pauline Quirke gives Dixon a wonderful vein of comic snobbery that never curdles into cruelty; her sighs and pointed silences say more about the Hales' fallen circumstances than exposition could. She's a small, human anchor of continuity and loyalty amid the family's upheaval, and Quirke plays her with warmth beneath the huffing.