Captain Fleming Agnes' father and a retired sea captain. When Fleming retires, he forms a friendship with Edwin Leeford. Alan Bleasdale on Fleming: "Fleming does exist in the novel and Dickens makes it clear that he died of a broken heart when he lost his daughter. I was fascinated by the glimpse we got of him and the other earlier characters, so I enjoyed fleshing him out." Alun Armstrong, a well-established actor with a string of credits in film, theatre and television, plays Captain Fleming, the heartbroken father whose eldest daughter Agnes runs away from home after discovering she is pregnant by family friend, Edwin Leeford.