Reginald Jeeves

Jeeves is Bertie Wooster's valet, a man of unshakeable calm and near-total competence who materialises silently in rooms and fixes crises Bertie didn't know he was causing. He disapproves quietly of loud waistcoats and youthful folly, and prefers to solve problems through discreet manoeuvring rather than confrontation, always a step ahead of everyone around him.

Fry plays him with a stillness that makes every line land twice as hard — the joke is never that Jeeves is funny, but that he refuses to be, delivering total sentences of icy propriety while quietly running rings around the aristocracy. That restraint, against Bertie's chaos, is the whole engine of the show's comedy.