Hugh Abbot

Hugh Abbot is the Minister for Social Affairs, a decent-enough career politician permanently out of his depth. He wants to survive the news cycle, keep his department's policy launch from becoming a farce, and avoid the wrath of the Prime Minister's enforcer. Mostly he flails, apologises, and hopes nobody notices he has no idea what he's doing.

Chris Langham plays panic so exactly - the stammered non-answers, the sweat under a soundbite - that Hugh becomes the audience's proxy inside the madness, the one person whose bewilderment matches ours. He's never quite villain or victim, just a man trying to look competent while the ground keeps moving, and that ordinary flop-sweat desperation is what makes the satire land.