This review is based on the first three episodes of Twenty Twenty Six.

Twenty Twelve and W1A aren’t just good comedies, they’re great comedies, and that’s not an overstatement… that’s an uberstatement.

Through the eyes of Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), our viewpoint character, these shows gave us a glance at the bafflingly weird world of corporate bureaucracy – first at the Olympic Deliverance Commission and then the BBC. 

Both series were deliberately infuriating, sharply written and surprisingly heartfelt even while satirising the institutional dysfunction that cripples so many UK organisations. 

So when John Morton, the genius behind this brilliant series, announced that he was working on a new show set in the same world, we were like ‘Great, yeah, cool’.

Sadly, though, his latest mockumentary, Twenty Twenty Six – which sees Ian helping organise the 2026 FIFA World Cup – struggles to escape the shadow of his previous work. 

Now I should say that I don’t think Twenty Twenty Six is a bad show; in fact, I think it’s quite a clever and funny show. 

The first two mockumentaries wrung a lot of comedic juice out of British politeness and prevarication. 

Indeed, a character’s inability to say anything without contradicting themselves three or four times in a single sentence was one of the joys of W1A. 

Twenty Twenty Six, however, is more of a fish-out-of-water comedy, with Ian now living in Miami and contending with American (and European, Canadian and Mexican) colleagues who may speak the same language but have a completely different style of communicating. 

It’s a funny evolution of Ian’s normal predicament and makes the series every bit as toe-curlingly awkward as its two cringey predecessors. 

There’s also plenty of servings of the usual delicious word salad, especially from David Tennant, who returns as narrator and the VP On Pitch Protocol Phil Plank, a former footballer who may be more out of his depth than even Ian. 

I also really enjoyed the way the series played with different American stereotypes, be it the slick East Coast lawyer or his more eco-friendly West Coast equivalent. 

It was a fun reminder that the US isn’t a monoculture. 

However, of the new characters introduced, my favourites are easily the World Cup social media team. I’m not sure what Morton thinks of social media, but if I were a betting man, I’d hazard a guess he hates it. 

Seriously, I’ve never seen such a withering take on the vapidness of social media journalism. It’s borderline cruel and all the more fun for it. 

Ultimately, though, what teased the biggest smile out of me, while watching Twenty Twenty Twenty Six, was when the series went to the well and reminded us that humanity only has one common language: incompetence. 

Yes, despite being set over the pond, Twenty Twenty Six embraces its predecessors’ prevailing spirit that if things can go wrong, they will go absurdly wrong, and it will somehow fall on Ian to fix things. 

Speaking of Ian, Bonneville may have spent the last decade cavorting with Paddington Bear and shouting at Butlers in Downton Abbey, but the former Head of Values hasn’t lost his baffled charm. 

He just plays bemused straight man so well, and his painfully patient form of exasperation never fails to make me smile. 

Yet therein lies one of my two main rubs with Twenty Twenty Six, aside from the change in scenery (although it was filmed in Wembley), there’s a slight sense that we’re just playing the hits. 

The jokes are still awkward, but it’s the same stuff Ian was dealing with in W1A, with a FIFA logo (or not as the case may be) glued over the BBC’s. 

It’s not bad persay it’s just a little safe. 

That’s perhaps most reflected in the decision to bring back Will – Ian’s personal assistant from the BBC. 

Now I love Will, but his reason for being in the series is inexcusably thin, and he’s basically there to be the butt of jokes about nepotism and ineptitude just like in W1A.

Funny? Yes. New? Not at all. 

What I think I find so disappointing about this, though, isn’t necessarily that they brought Will back; it’s that they didn’t bring Siobhan (Jessica Hynes) back. 

Siobhan was always the Yin to Ian’s Yang, the thorn in his side, the funny one to his straight man. 

They worked best when they had each other to bounce off, so the decision to have Twenty Twenty Six sing from the same hymn sheet as Twenty Twelve and W1A without her means you notice her absence all the more.

There are also a few jokes made about social politics – specifically the use of they/them – which I must admit landed with an absolute thud for me. 

It’s not that I don’t think you can joke about pronouns, but it felt like such a 2019 gag. 

All that aside, I did enjoy Twenty Twenty Six, and I’m looking forward to watching the last few episodes, especially as there are hints of a slightly deeper running thread teased in the first three episodes. 

It’s just that for me, right, in my opinion, and I’m not being funny or nothing I needed this to be a lot funnier than it is. 

Twenty Twenty Six episode one is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer and will air on BBC Two at 10pm.

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