Twenty Twenty Six Review: Hugh Bonneville's World Cup Comedy Wields Jokes as Subtly as Foam Mallets
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.
A Meeting of Minds, or Lack Thereof
It's a Monday morning in Miami, and Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is in a meeting. This 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, as it allows 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 Ian finds himself up against in the six-part mockumentary series Twenty Twenty Six: irretrievable Americans, not to mention the odd implacable Mexican, several dense Britons, and a Belgian called Eric, who says things like, "I am the conduit," and has one of those beards that looks as if it's made of sand.
Steering a Ship of Fools
Onto 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.
Caricatures and Missed Opportunities
The opening episode finds the team arguing over which cities should hold the "soccer semi-finals" (the words "Fifa" and "Cup" are repeatedly bleeped out, due to legal reasons). Later episodes find the team arguing over wooden condoms and David Beckham. As with W1A and Twenty Twelve, nobody in Twenty Twenty Six seems to know why they're there. But while W1A had berks of the calibre of Jason Watkins' Simon Harwood and Jessica Hynes' Siobhan Sharpe, Twenty Twenty Six has a collection of roughly daubed caricatures, each assigned a joke wielded like an oversized foam mallet.
Some of these jokes are more successful than others. Alexis Michalik is very good as Eric Van Depuytrens, a plonkeur without portfolio who drifts around in a self-guffed cloud of gnomic complacency. And huzzah (and phew) for the return of W1A's hapless Will Humphries (the brilliant Hugh Skinner) as Ian's assistant, a man visibly haunted by his own stupidity. But then, woe, there is Gabriela De La Rosa (Jimena Larraguivel), whose thing is that she is an angry Mexican woman, a joke that, even for a comedy as cosily middle-aged as Twenty Twenty Six, seems just ever so slightly off.
Dated and Tired Execution
The camera jitters around in the customary mockumentary fashion, zooming in on the pointless whiteboards and circling the oversight team's skulls like an anxious uncle asking about biscuits at a wake. It all feels quite dated and tired, with several scenes wandering off before the punchline, possibly to take a closer look at the potted palms. Tennant's voiceover is pitch perfect, but the absurdist energy that powered Morton's previous projects is, alas, no longer there. What's more, the series appears unsure of its targets. Whereas W1A placed a whoopee cushion firmly under Auntie's buttocks, Twenty Twenty Six gives Fifa and, indeed, football in general a bewilderingly wide berth, opting instead to lumber around in the not enormously rewarding space between "corporate idiocy" and "Americans."
"What is the story here?" we might ask, at a meeting. If only there had been a meeting to action the outcome of that meeting, Twenty Twenty Six might not feel like such a missed opportunity. Twenty Twenty Six aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer.
