Michael Fagan

Michael Fagan is an unemployed odd-job man in early-1980s London, adrift amid rising unemployment and a fraying sense of belonging. Restless and quietly desperate, he fixates on reaching the Queen herself, convinced that if only someone at the top would listen, something might change for people like him.

The Crown could have played this as farce or thriller, but Tom Brooke makes Fagan achingly sincere — a man not plotting mischief but seeking to be heard. His shabby, unassuming presence turns an infamous security breach into something almost tender: two lonely people from opposite worlds, briefly speaking plainly to each other.