Minister

A government minister glimpsed in the background of Andy Millman's world of extras and bit players, he carries himself with the brisk, faintly bored authority of someone used to being deferred to. He wants the scene, and the room, handled his way, and behaves as though everyone else is furniture.

Patrick Malahide brings the clipped, unimpeachable poise of a career official to a show built on puncturing exactly that kind of certainty, and the joke lands harder for his refusal to wink at it. He plays the status straight, which is why Extras' comedy of embarrassment has somewhere to land.