Harold Wilson

Harold Wilson arrives in Downing Street as Labour's pragmatic new Prime Minister, pipe in hand, a grammar-school man amid the aristocracy of the Palace. He is sharp, watchful, and faintly amused by the pomp around him, aware that the Queen and her circle regard him with suspicion he intends to quietly outlast.

Jason Watkins plays Wilson as unshowy intelligence rather than swagger, letting small hesitations and dry asides do the work. The writing uses him to needle the show's assumptions about class and monarchy, and Watkins never lets you forget there's real shrewdness behind the rumpled, ordinary surface.