Vicky Budd

Vicky Budd is married to David, a war-veteran police officer whose silences and flashes of temper have worn the marriage thin. A serving police officer herself, she is trying to hold together a household with two children while deciding whether she can, or should, stay with a husband she no longer fully recognises.

Sophie Rundle plays the toll of loving someone hollowed out by what he's seen, without ever making Vicky a victim or a saint. Her exhaustion and wariness feel entirely lived-in, and the show lets her have her own professional life and judgment rather than reducing her to a worried wife waiting by the door.