David Costabile

David Costabile’s Doug is the hapless husband of an obsessive fan in Flight of the Conchords (2007), a promising position for an actor willing to look ineffectual. Doug gives us someone whose predicament is already funny, without needing to be the centre of the programme. We laughed at the songs because they made Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement’s deadpan performances funnier still. Costabile fits the comedy’s modest scale, though the ordinary plots sometimes leave too much waiting between numbers.

His television work became more prominent through a succession of professional men: Thomas Klebanow, the Baltimore Sun’s managing editor, in The Wire (2008), then chemist Gale Boetticher in Breaking Bad from 2010 to 2011. Gale brought wider recognition, and Costabile returned to the part in Vince Gilligan’s Better Call Saul. The mild-mannered chemist is a useful example of his care with body and voice. We rate that precision, which gives a supporting character something more particular than a job to do in the plot.

In Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects (2013), he plays Carl, but this is a less useful starting point for watching Costabile at work. Rooney Mara is the remarkable presence in a thriller we like with reservations. Its first hour takes depression seriously; the later potboiler is efficiently built but cares less about the pills than the opening suggests. It is worth an evening for the pharmaceutical intrigue, though we would not choose it chiefly for Costabile.

Billions (2016–2023) gave him a main role as Mike ‘Wags’ Wagner, Axe Capital’s chief operating officer, after years of recurring appearances elsewhere. That is a welcome expansion of the opportunities for an actor so often employed in somebody else’s story. There is a limit to how much we can learn from the smaller parts, however precisely he distinguishes them. Start with Doug if dry comedy is the attraction; choose Wags if the wish is to spend longer with him.