Mr Ajayi

Mr Ajayi teaches at the boys' grammar school and runs the film club, where Charlie and his friends drift in and out. He's young enough to still feel slightly out of step with the staff room, easy-going with his students, quick with a joke, and quietly attentive to the kids who need someone to notice them.

Heartstopper could have made him a wise adult mouthpiece; instead he's endearingly unpolished, still working out his own life alongside the students he's meant to be guiding. Fisayo Akinade plays him with a nervy, likeable warmth that makes his classroom feel like a genuine refuge rather than a plot device, and lets the character's own tentative romance breathe as its own story.