Main Characters | Students and Teachers | Other Characters
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Families
In General
- Parents as People: A recurring theme with all of the parents in this series; they all struggle to raise their children due to a mix of personal issues and insecurities.
Milburn Famly
Remi Milburn
Remi Milburn
Played By: James Purefoy
Otis's father and Jean's ex-husband. A writer and sex guru.
- Domestic Abuse: Emotionally. When Jean found out about his cheating, he tried to brush it off by basically gas-lighting her.
- Evil Parents Want Good Kids: During a heart-to-heart with Otis, Remi advises his estranged son to not make the same choices he'd made if he wants to be loved.
- Hidden Depths: For all his smugness and arrogance, he knows how much of an arsehole and a liar he is, and how deeply miserable he is, and does not want his son to commit the same mistakes he did. And he actually gives Otis genuinely good and deep advice.
- Insufferable Genius: An academic who gets very patronizing with Jakob, a plumber and handyman.
- I Want to Be a Real Man: Remi's offer to take Otis and Eric hiking turns out to be a shallow attempt at proving he's just as macho as Jakob is. To say Remi knowns nothing about how to camp or handle the elements would be an understatement.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: With Otis, and only Otis, he shows that below all his assholery, there is a regretful and self loathing individual. His talk with Otis in the last chapter of season 2 might be his most genuine and open moment with his son. He also gives him really good advice to avoid committing the mistakes he did.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: He reads a chapter of his latest book, which is supposed to provide guidance to insecure young men, but it uses so much Purple Prose that a passer-by is able to see he's full of shit.
- Sex Addiction: He suffers from a bad case of this. When out camping with Otis and Eric, he actually goes into withdrawal. He later outright admits that this is one of his major problems to Jean, and it's implied to be a contributing factor to his infidelity and unethical practices.
- The Shrink: Type One, Harmful. Uses his access to clients to have sex with them and thus feed his addiction, which is unethical and probably illegal. Also straights up tell Otis "never to read [[his]] fucking book" on, "Masculinity in Crisis".
- Snake Oil Salesman: Despite making a name for himself as a self-help guru, even Remi will admit that Otis shouldn't take advice from his writings.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Otis is greatly upset when he finds out the only reason Remi wants to spend time with him is because his current wife kicked him out. He later confronts Remi and demands to know if he even likes his son.
Joanna Franklin
Joanna Franklin
Played By: Lisa Mc Grillis
Jean's talkative yet irresponsible sister and Otis' aunt.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Is the foolish to Jean's responsible.
Wiley Family
Sean Wiley
Sean Wiley
Played By: Edward Bluemel
Maeve's volatile older brother.
- Aloof Big Brother: He disappears from Maeve's life for months at a time with no warning, and bear in mind he's the closest thing to her legal guardian.
- The Bus Came Back: He's brought back in season 4 to see Maeve after hearing that their mother Erin passed away.
- Con Man: Spins a story about he and Maeve being orphans in order to solicit donations for Maeve's new prom dress. Maeve isn't comfortable with it.
- Faux Affably Evil: He puts on a show of being a caring brother trying to provide for his sister in luight of their parents' absence, not to mention befriending several students. It's all a load of crap, as he uses a sob story to con total strangers and pushes drugs onto students. He also leaves Maeve to take the fall for his actions.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to Maeve's responsible.
- Put on a Bus: Michael Groff catches him dealing drugs at the school dance and shoves him off the premises. Sean disappears after that.
Erin Wiley
Erin Wiley
Played By: Anne Marie Duff
Maeve's flighty mother.
- Bus Crash: She doesn't appear after giving Maeve the money to go to America. Off-screen, she continues to struggle with drug addiction, and an overdose leads to her death in season 4.
- Functional Addict: She struggles with drug addiction but has been clean for over a year now. In the past she was implicitly less functional. And it later turns out she isn't as clean as she lets on.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She's implied to have been this in high school. When she sees Maeve reading a copy of Middlemarch, Erin states that she was meant to read that for class but never did, preferring to smoke or hang around boys instead.
- Never My Fault: Maeve accuses her of this, and from the way we've seen Erin act over the course of the series, she has a point. She never takes real responsibility for her actions, nor does she stop lying to her daughter. When Elsie is taken away because Maeve called the police on Erin, rather than realise that it was her own fault for taking drugs, she has the gall to put all the blame and hate on Maeve, because "what child calls the cops on her own mother?"
- Parental Abandonment: Appears in season 2 after a long disappearance from Maeve's life, and this explains a lot about Maeve's issues connecting with people.
- Parents as People: She definitely isn't perfect, but she is struggling to do right by Maeve, and is hurt by Maeve's dismissiveness.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: She gets Isaac to communicate to Maeve for her, when she's still angry at her for reporting her to social services.
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: A deconstructed example as Erin is a flighty, drug-addicted Womanchild who has shown to be incapable of taking responsibility. Her daughter Maeve, on the other hand, is forced to be her own parent, has to study hard at school, work through to pay the rent and doesn't feel ready to accept her mother back in her life. It gets to the point where Maeve calls the police on Erin after discovering evidence that she has been using again.
Effiong Famly
Abeo Effiong
Abeo Effiong
Played By: DeObia Oparei
Eric’s father.
- Immigrant Parents: He's an immigrant from Africa.
- Parents as People: Abeo first learns that Eric is gay in season 1, and he doesn't take it very well. He responds by telling Eric that he needs to "grow up" and that he needs to "toughen up" if Eric wants to live with his "kind of lifestyle" (i.e. be openly gay). We learn later that he does so because as an immigrant, he had to learn the hard way how to fit in to British society, and he did not want his kids to go through the same thing. By the end of the season, he and Eric have reconciled as Abeo admits that he has a lot to learn from his brave son.
- Tough Love: As mentioned above, he puts Eric through this after learning that he is gay, thinking that it's the only way to protect him from getting hurt.
Beatrice Effiong
Groff Famly
Maureen Groff
Maureen Groff
Played By: Samantha Spiro
Headmaster Groff's wife and Adam's mother, a kind but lonely woman.
- The Dog Bites Back: Fed up her husband's callousness and indifference to both her and her son, Maureen finds the courage to kick him out of the house and divorce him.
- Good Parents: Whereas her husband is cold and emotionally abusive to their son, she gives Adam unconditional love, support and affection.
Peter Groff
Peter
Played By: Jason Isaacs
Headmaster Groff's more successful brother.
- Big Brother Bully: Middle-aged example. Peter is hugely insensitive to his younger brother Michael and makes fun of him at a dinner party. A flashback reveals he was always like this, mocking his younger brother for crying.
- Hate Sink: He stands out as the one of the few antagonistic characters without any sympathetic or endearing qualities.
- Silver Fox: Despite being the older of the two brothers, Peter has aged more gracefully. Possibly due to the combination of having a cushy job and not settling down with a family.
Marchetti Family
Sofia and Roz
Sofia and Roz Marchetti
Played By: Hannah Waddingham (Sofia), Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Roz)
Jackson's mothers.
- Doesn't Know Their Own Child: Both mothers are unaware that Jackson has been having a sexual relationship with Maeve. When the two go steady, Maeve is expected to clean up so they don't get the wrong idea about her. In Series 2 they're kept in the dark that Jackson deliberately injured himself to get out of training.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Sofia won't let Jackson enjoy the full school dance because he's got training in the morning.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: A lot of their family drama comes from the mothers wanting to dictate the course of Jackson's life regardless how he feels about it.
- Parents as People: Sofia's obsession with training Jackson stems from feelings of insecurity regarding the fact she has no biological connection to him. When she found out Jackson enjoyed sports she saw it as an opportunity for them to bond.
Nyman Famly
Jakob
Jakob Nyman
Played By: Mikael Persbrandt
A gruff handyman who redoes the Milburns' bathroom. He and Jean develop a mutual attraction for each other.
- Bilingual Bonus: He's got some undubbed lines in Swedish, and most of them are actually quite funny.
- Fatal Flaw: Trust issues. His first wife had an affair, but then immediately got cancer and succumbed slowly, so he never had time to process the betrayal before he had to take care of her and watch her die. Because of it, he has trouble trusting Jean because of her previous, casual approach to dating, and her kissing her ex-husband in a moment of weakness.
- Funny Foreigner: Less in your face than most examples but he has a sort of gloomy, philosophical air and vastly different sense of manners that are played for laughs.
- Guys are Slobs: Jean finds his scruffy blue-collar exterior attractive for awhile, but she soon grows tired of his sloppiness and general apathy.
- Hidden Depths: His wife's death affected him deeply, to the point he never had any relationship until Jean appeared. He is also a very wise man, extremely good at reading people (Jean and her ex husband. He also tells Otis that he knows that despite being a bit of an arsehole, he is a good man), and while nice, he will never let anyone push him over, nor be dismissed. He also knows his boundaries and limits.
- Hot Men at Work: Downplayed in that he doesn't get overtly fanservicey scenes while fixing the Milburns' plumbing, but she does develop an attraction for him while watching him work.
- Opposites Attract: Deconstructed. Jean and Jakob have precious little in common, coming from very different cultural and class backgrounds, with different temperaments, as well as different views on how to raise kids, how to vote (namely, Jakob doesn't vote), and pretty much everything else. Rather than simply making them an Odd Couple, it causes serious tension that brings their relationship to a halt twice, and makes the fact they're raising a child together quite difficult.
- Put on a Bus: Jakob leaves Jean after learning he is not the father of her baby after all.
- Sexy Scandinavian: Jean thinks it so.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Seems very foreboding and gloomy at first, but he is a really nice guy and caring parent.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Once he and Jean start an actual relationship, he wastes no time moving in with her and drives her up the wall with his much laxer standards of tidiness.
Caravan park
Cynthia
Cynthia
Played By: Lisa Palfrey
Maeve's landlady, as owner of the caravan park where she lives.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Treats her cat Jonathan like a child, dressing him up in costumes and talking about him as if he were a human. This stops being played for laughs after Jonathan dies; her husband confirms she saw him as the son she couldn’t have, and she has trouble moving on or properly grieving him.
- Put on a Bus: Jeffrey mentioned to Maeve that she didn't attend her mother's funeral as funerals remind her of Jonathan.
Farm & Horse
Jem
Jem
Played By: Bella Maclean
A worker and the daughter of the Farm & Horse's owner.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Jem is feminine with blond short hair, and also working at a farm.
- Maybe Ever After: She and Adam agree to go out on a date.
