CHRISTOPHER STEVENS opinions Twenty Twenty Six: Pin-sharp satire as W1A wally Ian heads Stateside for the World Cup
Twenty Twenty Six (BBC 2)
FIFA is a four-letter word. Few people would argue about that, after the Federation Internationale de Football Association awarded Donald Trump its inaugural Peace Prize last year.
But every time narrator David Tennant says ‘FIFA’, in the World Cup comedy Twenty Twenty Six, it gets bleeped out. Whether this is really ‘for legal reasons’ is a moot point, because the bleeper turns FIFA into ‘F***’. Which sounds even ruder.
Hugh Bonneville is back in this corporate satire as Ian Fletcher, former Head of Deliverance for the London Olympics, ex-Head of Values at the Beeb, and now Director of Integrity for the summer’s U.S. soccer spectacular.
Little has changed since W1A’s final episode in 2020 except the cast. Director and writer John Morton’s script is still a pin-sharp send-up of business-speak, cramming as many cliches as possible into every line.
Hugh (another four-letter word) is looking a little portlier, a touch more grizzled, but he’s still liable to provide conditional, deniable agreement to everything anyone says, by murmuring, ‘Well, yes, I mean no-yes.’
He’s in ‘Miami, somewhere in Florida’, as Tennant’s voiceover explained, to help tidy up a few minor details of the contest, such as where the matches will actually be played.
Written by John Morton, Twenty Twenty Six stars Hugh Skinner and Hugh Bonneville (L-R) as Will Humphries and Ian Fletcher
It is a follow up to the successful Twenty Twelve and W1A series. Little has changed since W1A, other than the cast
Setting the show in the States is a risk. Twenty Twelve and W1A tickled us because they satirised a type of incompetence that is a specialism of the UK — nervous, self-deprecating, getting away with uselessness only because everyone else is too polite to point it out, writes Stevens
This time round, sadly, there’s no Jessica Hynes, Sarah Parish or Jason Watkins. The opening episode felt decidedly lightweight without them, though Hugh Skinner did return in the final seconds as gormless Will.
Goggling at him, Ian demanded to know what he was doing in Miami. ‘Yeah, well, I dunno, your mentor?’ Will mumbled — though whether that really means he’s on hand to offer the benefit of his experience, we don’t yet know.
Setting the show in the States is a risk. Twenty Twelve and W1A tickled us because they satirised a type of incompetence that is a specialism of the UK — nervous, self-deprecating, getting away with uselessness only because everyone else is too polite to point it out.
Americans are not like that. When Ian opens his first U.S. meeting with the suggestion, ‘Can we make some sort of start?’, a woman gasps, ‘Oh my God, so British!’
But since I’ve never worked in a Stateside office, it’s difficult to know whether the characters are equally well-observed or just lazy stereotypes.
I can’t help suspecting it’s the latter: the angry Mexican woman keeps lapsing into Spanish, the Canadian chap is laidback and slightly contemptuous of everything USA. Ian’s boss, who is ‘mostly Belgian’, appears to be little more than a silly accent, pronounced ‘zilly axxzente’.
The best jokes revolve around the Englishman floundering in the New World, a reliable source of humour since Dickens’s day.
How should a Brit behave during the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner? Ian settles for clenching his fist over his heart — fiercely patriotic, or suffering a twinge of angina.
