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Avenue 5 Crew
Ryan Clark
Ryan Clark
Portrayed by: Hugh Laurie
The Captain of Avenue 5, an outgoing, affable, heroic American man who charms and reassures everyone he meets. Says his job description.
- Accent Slip-Up: Captain Ryan has an authoritative American accent while on duty as the figurehead captain of the ship. Sometimes, however, he slips up and lapses into a rather lower-class English accent with a noticeably higher voice. People are understandably shocked when they catch on.
- The Captain: Captain Ryan may not know anything about the mechanics of the ship, but he does prove good at the job he was hired to do, namely putting everyone at their ease.
- Fake American: Both in-universe and out: Hugh Laurie is a British man playing a British man pretending to be an American man.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: Captain Ryan is often touted as the hero of a disaster on Avenue 3, even though he is quick to insist that he was just there and the fire-fighters did the work. Later, he's praised for fixing Avenue 5's ruptured "wet suit", even though Billie did the actual work.
- Polyamory: Captain Ryan is in a marriage with a man and a woman. In episode 5 they get a trivorce because they can't handle the stress of his (assumed) heroics and him being away for another three and a half years.
- In season 2 he gets into a relationship with a woman and her husband.
- Sanity Slippage: The whole crew gets this starting in the first few episodes, but him worst of all.
Billie McEvoy
Billie McEvoy
Portrayed by: Lenora Crichlow
The second engineer aboard Avenue 5. Unique among the crew in actually being qualified for her job.
- Cuteness Proximity: Usually is laser focused on the problem of the episode, but in season two, is completely sidetracked when shown pictures of beagles.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Billie is constantly annoyed by the fact that she has to solve nearly every problem and never gets any credit for it.
- The Engineer: Her role on the ship, particularly after Joe's death.
- Only Sane Woman: Frequently the only person on the crew (that is, the crew who's let out in public) who has the slightest idea how to idea how to operate a spacecraft.
Matt Spencer
Matt Spencer
Portrayed by: Zach Woods
Head of customer relations for Avenue 5, despite questionable capacity to relate to customers.
- The Anti-Nihilist: Describes himself as the regular kind of nihilist but is more this. Or he tries to be.
- Cloudcuckoolander: One episode finds Matt "itemizing his thoughts," which include the following: "Thought 309: Every year, we pass the pre-anniversary of our death but we don't even know it, so we don't get presents. Thought 14: Poor octopus... eight arms, but no hands. Fuck you, God!"
- Freudian Excuse: Several of his on-board announcements imply his father was a cruel, distant alcoholic. Him being Matt, it's hard to tell how much is real and how much is him messing with the crew.
- Heroic BSoD: Has one after inadvertently convincing several crew members to fling themselves out the airlock via "nuanced philosophy." He's actually just getting snacks from the vending machine.
- Hidden Depths: He harbors a bit of a Dark and Troubled Past, revealing in season 2 that he tells people that he left his ex-wife when in reality she had died.
- Informed Judaism: Wears a yarmulke at the funerals in the second episode. Aside from that, his Judaism never comes up.
- Not Afraid to Die: Believes death is "just a long, beautiful nap". He's serious about it, too. When the ship skims past the sun and select passengers take refuge in an insulated laundry chute, he willingly gives his place to Rav.
- Underling with an F in PR: A pretty bizarre example because he is supposed to handle PR but he can't do it to save his life (or anybody's, and that is literally). Absolute best case scenario, he just has Loose Lips and supplies Too Much Information.
- Wrong Line of Work: Someone somewhere has inexplicably decided that a depressive nihilist with an unremittingly bleak view of existence and a complete inability to keep said unremittingly bleak view to himself whatever the circumstances should be in charge of managing the ship's public relations.
Herman Judd
Herman Judd
Portrayed by: Josh Gad
First of all, I have a much greater social media presence than NASA does.
The billionaire face of Avenue 5, which is perhaps the only reason anyone puts up with him.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Seems to actually care for Iris while still being a narcissistic egomaniac. At the end of season 2 he negotiates for mustard because Iris likes it.
- Delusions of Eloquence: Among his many delusions, as exemplified by basically any quote: "I am the alpha and the beta!"
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Judd is repeatedly shown to be incapable of understanding the basic physics of space travel or how the current situation will prevent the ship from returning to Earth after the accident.
- Manchild: Virtually everything does qualifies him as such.
Iris Kimura
Iris Kimura
Portrayed by: Suzy Nakamura
Herman Judd's personal assistant.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Iris has to both appease Judd's whims and occasionally force him into doing things for good PR.
- Deadpan Snarker: Probably the bluntest of the crew.
- Undying Loyalty: Despite everything, and no matter how ridiculous their circumstances get, she always throws her support behind Judd.
Sarah
Sarah
Portrayed by: Daisy May Cooper
Part of the bridge crew of Avenue 5; actually a model. A hand model.- Bad "Bad Acting": Like all of the bridge crew; Sarah (the actress) just takes Sarah (the character) a bit more seriously.
- The Danza: In universe. Sarah (the actress) claims it's how she got the job playing Sarah (the character).
- Irony: She's a hand model. After she gets flash-frozen to death in the airlock, one of her hands smacks against the door and snaps off as she floats away.
- Lost in Character: In-universe, Sarah (the actress) has a crush on Captain Clark but doesn't know if the crush comes from her or Sarah (the character). Eventually Sarah (the actress) ejects herself out the airlock because it seemed like something Sarah (the character) would do.
- Third-Person Person: How she tends to refer to herself, or her character.
Mads
Mads
Portrayed by: Adam Palsson
Part of the bridge crew of Avenue 5; actually a model.- Bad "Bad Acting": Has a set list of stock lines he'll repeat when asked about shipboard situations, no matter how relevant or BS.
- Mr. Fanservice: In-universe, the reason he was hired.
Rav Mulcair
Rav Mulcair
Portrayed by: Nikki Amuka-Bird
The leader of Judd's Aeronautics division back on Earth and Mission Control for the Avenue 5 journey, i.e., the one who is blamed for everything.
- Didn't Think This Through: She hops on a supply shuttle for Avenue 5 to do some problem-solving in person before bringing Jud back, not realizing there's only room in it for one person besides the pilot.
- Mission Control: Rav is utterly powerless to do anything to fix the situation; all she can do is sit there watching the constant chaos on the ship's livestream. All her attempts to find someone else who can do something meet with failure. She eventually gets so tired of being blamed that she takes a seat on the supply shuttle just so she won't have to deal with it any more.
- Only Sane Woman: Has this role down on Earth, where even fewer people view her as such.
Joe
Joe
Portrayed by: Neil Casey
The first engineer of Avenue 5, until he died trying to fix the ship.- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Captain Clark "borrows" the hands of Joe's corpse in order to gain authentication to dock the ship. Unfortunately, space is a vacuum.
- Burial in Space: What the crew tries to do with Joe's body. It doesn't work quite so well.
- The Man Behind the Man: Joe was the real captain of the ship — Captain Ryan was just hired to provide a friendly and affable face for the passengers to relate to.
Cyrus
Cyrus
Portrayed by: Neil Casey
One of the "real" engineers aboard Avenue 5. Has a mild grudge against Billie for getting a NASA internship over him.- Mr. Exposition: A running gag is Cyrus informing the crew of the ever-increasing, comically long amount of time Avenue 5 is stuck in space now.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Totally disappears from season 2.
Passengers
In General
In General
- Powder Keg Crowd: One of the biggest problems aboard the Avenue 5 is that the passengers are a bunch of jerks on the verge of a nervous breakdown and way too easy access to alcohol.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Every single passenger on the ship as well as its owner, Judd, are heavily implied to be incredibly rich, but also proven to be incredibly stupid.
Karen Kelly
Karen Kelly
Portrayed by: Rebecca Front
A particularly overbearing and insistent passenger, whose unique "skills" earn her the position of "passenger liaison."- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: She has an Annie Wilkes level aversion to profanity no matter how upset she is, made even funnier by how it's never once actually acknowledged by anyone.
- Happily Married: Despite her faults, she and Frank seem to genuinely love each other.
- Meaningful Name: The name 'Karen' has become an internet meme for "I want to talk to the manager" middle aged women who constantly complain about the quality of service they are getting as store customers. It is not a surprise that the character who most exemplifies this on the ship is named Karen.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the season 1 finale, she chooses to jettison the trash out of the port-side airlocks because it was "more efficient" due to the port side having more airlocks than the rear of the ship. Unfortunately, this results in the ship being knocked off course and, rather than cutting their return time to six months, she extends it to eight years.
- Nosy Neighbor: Karen Kelly is what happens when you get a specially loud and Jerkass example of this trope and shove her in an Apollo 13-type situation. It doesn't helps that many of the discussions she overhears are done very loudly.
Frank Kelly
Frank Kelly
Portrayed by: Andy Buckley
Karen's wife. Far more mellow than her, which to be fair is rather easy to be.- Happily Married: To Karen, as above.
- Ridiculously Average Guy: Actually referred to as "Mr. Average" at one point. The most exciting thing he's ever done is take out a bridge loan.
- The Scapegoat: Is blamed for the rupturing of the ship's "wetsuit," and the irate crew demands - and almost succeeds- to "shit him out the airlock."
Mia
Mia
Portrayed by: Jessica St. Clair
One half of a very un-amicably separated couple. Doug
Doug
Portrayed by: Kyle Bornheimer
The other half of a very un-amicably separated couple.- Odd Friendship: With Spike, eventually.
Spike Martin
Spike Martin
Portrayed by: Ethan Phillips
A former astronaut and (supposedly) the first Canadian to land on Mars.- Ambiguously Bi: Explicitly described as a womanizer, but also claims he'll "take it where he can get it, a hole's a hole." He takes to Doug (the addressee of the aforementioned quote) so quickly that Ryan suspects they're "blowing each other in a doorway."
- Dirty Old Man: Happily discusses masturbating to the Gemini constellation.
Harrison Aimes
Harrison Aimes
Portrayed by: Paterson Joseph
A trillionaire VIP passenger with a mutual grudge against Herman Judd.- Everyone Has Standards: Harrison is possibly the biggest Jerkass on the ship (which is saying something), but even he's disgusted when a couple of other passengers casually reveal that they abandoned their comatose son on Earth to go on the cruise because they didn't want to cancel their plans.
- Jerkass: As above, Harrison is one in comparison to the rest of the crew, which is saying something.
Jordan Hatwal
Jordan Hatwal
Portrayed by: Himesh Patel
An aspiring standup comedian- Bad "Bad Acting": His role on the show is largely to showcase his excruciating standup.
Jaden
Jaden
Portrayed by: Kelly Coughlin
A passenger who works in VFX — you know, Visual Effects.- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Convinces herself and several other crewmates that they're on a reality show and the desiccated corpse outside the airlock is just VFX — visual effects! — and will be headed to the green room any minute now.
- Too Dumb to Live: The inevitable result of the above.
