Mother

Mother runs the agency from behind a desk, wheelchair-bound and never quite in the same room twice—his headquarters seem to rearrange themselves episode to episode. Genial, portly, and given to barking instructions at Tara King and Steed alike, he presents as an eccentric bureaucrat rather than a man of action, all cardigans and clipped authority.

Patrick Newell plays him with plummy, unbothered good humour, a spymaster who treats world-ending stakes with the mild irritation of a man whose tea has gone cold. The show's fondness for absurdity finds its purest outlet in him: the wheelchair, the ever-changing offices, the deadpan delivery all turn bureaucracy itself into a running joke.