When Hugh Bonneville was first requested to reprise the function of Ian Fletcher – protagonist of John Morton’s Bafta-winning office satires Twenty Twelve and W1A – his emotions had been combined. “I was on the one hand absolutely delighted,” says the actor, now most well-known for taking part in dignified patriarchs in Downton Abbey and Paddington. “On the other hand, I was terrified because it’s the most painful and horrible experience I’ve ever had on television.”
In Twenty Twelve, Fletcher flexed his managerial muscle tissue as “Head of Deliverance of the Olympic Deliverance Commission,” guiding his workforce by means of the chaotic run-up to the 2012 London Games. In W1A, he landed a job as “Head of Values” on the BBC, the place he waded by means of a sequence of absurd disasters. Nine years on, a weary Fletcher is again in back-to-back conferences because the “Director of Integrity” of a anonymous worldwide soccer organisation internet hosting a anonymous worldwide soccer event (its blindingly apparent real-world foundation is rarely recognized resulting from “an overabundance of caution on the production’s part,” says Morton).
Fletcher could also be in a high-pressure place, however sitting at a boardroom desk gazing at PowerPoints doesn’t sound like a very agonising performing experience. What made Twenty Twelve and W1A stand out in a sea of post-Office mockumentaries, nevertheless, was its meticulously constructed naturalism; an intricate tapestry of stammered half-sentences. For the viewer, it was a satisfying send-up of British awkwardness. For the forged, it was a nightmare to memorise; the scripts are twice so long as your common 30-minute sitcom. “It’s the most impossible thing to learn because sometimes the sentences don’t make sense, [yet] the difference between ‘yes well but’ and ‘but well yes’ is profound,” says Bonneville. “I am constantly the one who runs into the buffers when everybody else is brilliant.”
On the set of Twenty Twenty Six final summer season, I didn’t see a lot proof of that. It’s mid-August, and filming is going down in a college in Wembley, which has been draped in purple cloth and trussed up with cheesy gold palm tree lamps and big bunches of faux flowers in a bid to move as a Miami arts centre. That’s proper: Fletcher, bastion of British politeness and prevarication, has been parachuted into the guts of American company tradition. And he’s not alone. By some coincidence, he has been reunited with Will Humphries (Hugh Skinner), his hapless intern from the BBC days, whose excruciating social uncertainty stays unrivalled.
When the companion of Twenty Twenty Six’s producer urged that Will – a W1A fan favorite – ought to return, Morton thought it was a “funny joke. About a week later I found myself thinking, yeah, I could just about believe that he’s washed up somehow in Miami.” Bonneville was delighted to reprise the double act. “I’m now describing Will as the Paddington of the office world – he means well, but he’s going to bump into everything and set the photocopier on fire. You want to look after him.”
I’m equally delighted to find that Skinner – whose dialog is a stop-start blizzard of self-effacement (“I sound like a knob, sorry!”, he exclaims, after evaluating delivering Morton’s dialogue to “a sport”) – isn’t 1,000,000 miles from his character. “The line’s blurring, isn’t it?” he says after beginning to discuss his personal experience on set in response to a query about Will’s wrestle to regulate to Miami life (after I point out Will’s incapability to finish a sentence, Skinner cuts in: “who are we talking about now?!”). To be honest, the actor is used to most of the people mistaking him for his character: when W1A was on the air, he discovered folks tended to “look at me and laugh in a sympathetic way”.
Alongside his spectacularly incompetent assistant, Fletcher has a few different European colleagues: Warrington’s Phil Plank, an ex-footballer who speaks like he’s in a perpetual post-match press convention, and mysterious Belgian Eric Van Dupuytrens, the anonymous worldwide soccer organisation’s chief coordinating attaché, who communicates in Eric Cantona-style koans. Then there are the host nation representatives: two Americans – earnestly idealistic head of sustainability and local weather technique Sarah Campbell and no-bullshit New York lawyer Nick Castellano – plus feisty Mexican “VP Optics and Narrative” Gabriela De La Rosa and mild Canadian logistics man Owen Mitchell.
If Twenty Twelve and W1A had been research in unstated British social etiquette, Twenty Twenty Six is extra of a tradition conflict comedy. Fletcher has “always been a captain of a ship of fools but in this case he’s a captain of a ship of very forthright, direct and energetic fools,” says Morton. “We’re used to seeing him in meetings where nobody’s saying what they actually mean and he’s good at navigating that. He’s suddenly dropped into a world where people say exactly what they mean … again and again.” According to Bonneville, Fletcher maintains “his very British approach of trying to be a mediator, trying to keep calm, trying to be cooperative.” Eventually, although, he does find yourself borrowing “a bit of that American boosterism,” says Morton.
Morton had been eager to resurrect Fletcher for some time, and the upcoming World C** (as per David Tennant’s very amusing and closely censored narration) felt like a “potentially fertile” backdrop resulting from its unwieldy scale; held throughout 16 cities, it’s the largest thus far. “As a writer, you think: hmm, that smells like things could go wrong.” That mentioned, Morton maintains Twenty Twenty Six just isn’t about soccer in any respect. Like W1A and Twenty Twelve, “it’s about trying to organise something – it could be the village fete, it could be an EU summit.” For Bonneville, the enjoyment of Fletcher-based exhibits is within the office theme: “the big ideas probably won’t be executed properly – certainly not by Thursday – and the maneuvering of office furniture and who’s allowed access to which biscuit tin. All these background details make it delicious.”
Still, there’s no getting away from the truth that at the same time as a backdrop for comedy, the World Cup carries a variety of baggage. 2022’s Qatar event was steeped in controversy resulting from considerations over people rights abuses, whereas on the morning I communicate to Morton and the forged, Iran’s participation is doubtful after Trump warned “the life and safety” of their gamers may very well be in danger on US soil. Morton says there’s “a show to be written about” these points, however “this is not it. I can’t write it.”
Photograph: Studiocanal/Allstar
Which is to not say the present shies away from uncomfortable matters. Bonneville thinks “dark is probably a bit of a strong word” for Twenty Twenty Six. “I’d say shaded.” There are references to Trump, plus a lot dialogue concerning the surroundings, together with carbon-offsetting and secure temperatures in stadiums. Chelsey Crisp, who performs Campbell, even interviewed her real-life equal from the 2023 girls’s World Cup to get a grip on the agenda. Then there’s the small matter of what occurred to Fletcher’s predecessor, who fell off a roof terrace with inordinately excessive security boundaries, presumably to his dying.
There are additionally way more light-hearted angles. Whereas W1A and Twenty Twelve had Jessica Hynes’s delusional PR maven Siobhan Sharpe, now the baton for massaging public notion has been handed to the social media workforce, a bunch of puppyish Gen Zs headed up by Madison, whose mindset is “any press is good press,” says Erin Kellyman who performs her (good press in episode one contains Mr Beast liking a submit about faeces).
Back on set, I watch a scene during which Bonneville’s Fletcher is shocked to see Will sporting pink hair for causes tangentially related to Megan Rapinoe. The motion is going down on a stairwell in entrance of a big window with a view of Wembley Stadium, which is able to later get replaced by an image of Miami (one thing the producers I’m sitting with shortly realise shall be much more troublesome with all of the extras strolling previous; they’re swiftly distributed with).
With such a well-known landmark within the eyeline, it’s a wrestle to purchase into the Florida setting – but the forged agree they didn’t must droop their disbelief an excessive amount of throughout the London-based shoot. “It was excruciatingly hot,” says Kellyman. “It really felt like we were in Miami.” There was one sometimes depressing distinction about filming within the UK, although. Bonneville describes the warmth as “unbearable. The irony being had we filmed it in Miami, it would have been air-conditioned,” he sighs. “But that’s the British way.”
Twenty Twenty Six is on BBC Two on 8 April at 10pm
