Lady Portia Featherington

Portia Featherington is a mother running out of time and money, scrambling to marry off her three daughters before the family's ruin becomes public. Sharp-tongued and perpetually anxious, she polices her girls' behavior with a mix of desperation and vanity, mortified by the eldest's clumsiness and blind to how her own choices have narrowed the family's options.

Polly Walker plays panic as comedy without ever losing the real fear underneath it. The writing hands her a woman who is petty and grasping in ways that are easy to mock, then keeps showing the trap she's actually in — a widow with no power except marrying off her children well, and not much time left to do it.