Simon Harwood

Simon Harwood is the BBC's Head of Values, a title that means precisely as little as it sounds. He shuffles between crisis meetings with a nervous, ingratiating smile, offering earnest jargon in place of actual solutions, desperate to be seen as competent while the organisation quietly combusts around him.

Jason Watkins plays him with a twitchy, apologetic sincerity that turns every mangled sentence into a small comic disaster — you can watch him realise mid-phrase that what he's saying makes no sense and plough on anyway. It's a precise satire of corporate anxiety, and Watkins never lets Simon become merely stupid; he's trying, which is funnier.