Lord Cowper

Lord Cowper presides over his household with the brisk, transactional air of a man for whom daughters are assets to be placed well. He wants advantageous marriages and social standing, and he is not gentle about saying so, especially to Cressida, whose prospects he treats as a business problem rather than a life.

Dominic Coleman plays him without cartoonish cruelty, which is what makes him unsettling — his coldness feels ordinary, almost reasonable by the ton's own logic. He's a small but sharp illustration of the marriage market's mechanics, a reminder of the stakes underneath all the ballroom glitter.