Joseph Molesley

Joseph Molesley arrives at Downton as Matthew Crawley's valet, eager to do the job properly in a house that runs on unspoken rules he keeps getting wrong. He is earnest, a little vain about his hair, easily wounded, and forever trying to secure a dignity that seems to slip away from him just as he reaches for it.

Molesley works because the show lets him be ridiculous without ever laughing at him cruelly — his humiliations sting because Kevin Doyle plays the hope underneath them so plainly. Every small comeuppance lands as comedy and pathos at once, and you find yourself rooting, almost embarrassingly hard, for a man whose only crime is trying too visibly.