The star returns as Ian Fletcher in this mockumentary from the makers of Twenty Twelve. But for every funny moment, there is a slightly off gag – and some truly woeful ones.
It’s a Monday morning in Miami and Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is in a meeting. The meeting has been set up to action another meeting, the outcome of which will be actioned – or at least consciously tabled – at a third, or possibly seventh, meeting. The meeting is also a meeting in a deeper sense, in that it is an opportunity for Ian, the “incoming director of integrity” at the organising body for world football (which, states the narrator, David Tennant, “we’re unable to name for legal reasons”), to establish his place in a corporate culture that is “irretrievably American”.
“Shall we begin?”, Ian asks his new colleagues. “Oh my God,” gasps the sustainability tsar, Sarah Campbell (Chelsey Crisp), pressing the palm of her hand swooningly to her breastbone. “Soooo British!”
This is the sort of thing that Ian finds himself up against in the six-part mockumentary series Twenty Twenty Six. That is: irretrievable Americans. Not to mention the odd implacable Mexican. And several dense Britons. And a Belgian called Eric, who says things such as: “I am the conduit,” and has one of those beards that looks as if it’s made of sand.
On to this ship of international fools clambers Ian, who, as head of the oversight team, must somehow steer the whole thing towards competency. Or at least get them to stop asking: “What is the story here?” for long enough to ensure that the forthcoming World Cup goes off without a hitch. Good luck with that, as they say.
We have, of course, met Ian before. He was the head of deliverance at the Olympic Deliverance Commission in the Bafta-winning Twenty Twelve and then head of values at the BBC in the self-satirising W1A. Now, in John Morton’s belated threequel, this crumpled husk of amiable vexation finds himself “in Miami, somewhere in Florida” where the management doublespeak comes with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and potted palms are as ubiquitous as non sequiturs. In almost all other respects, however, it’s mildly satirical business as usual.
