Rebecca Welton

Rebecca is the newly divorced owner of AFC Richmond, and she's inherited the club from a husband whose affairs humiliated her for years. She hires an unqualified American football coach for reasons she keeps to herself, sweeping through the training ground in couture, icy and imperious, clearly nursing a wound she has no intention of showing anyone.

Waddingham plays the joke before you know it's a joke: a woman styled as a villainess who is actually the show's wounded heart. Her comic timing is razor-sharp, but it's the flickers beneath Rebecca's composure — loneliness dressed as hauteur — that make her thaw feel earned rather than sentimental.