Malcolm Tucker

Malcolm Tucker is the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, the man who arrives to fix messes before they become headlines. He storms into ministerial offices unannounced, terrifies junior staff into silence, and treats truth as something to be managed rather than told. His job is control, and he wants it total.

Peter Capaldi delivers profanity as a kind of virtuosic music, insults piling into baroque, breathless sentences that are somehow both cruel and hilarious. The writing never lets him become a cartoon bully, though — underneath the tirades is a man who understands power completely and trusts almost no one, which is what makes him frightening rather than just funny.