Orlov

Orlov is Peter's long-suffering aide at the Russian court, a fussy, anxious intellectual trying to survive an emperor who treats cruelty as sport. When the new empress Catherine arrives full of Enlightenment ideals, he is assigned to manage her — and finds himself quietly, nervously drawn to what she actually wants to build.

Sacha Dhawan plays him as a man perpetually flinching, someone whose intelligence and decency have taught him to survive by disappearing into the furniture. The comedy comes from watching that instinct fail him as Catherine keeps asking him to actually stand for something, and Dhawan lets his fear curdle, believably, into conviction.