| Worth seeing: | as a re-rerun of all the familiar jokes, but with a less interesting array of supporting characters |
| Featuring: | Hugh Bonneville, Alexis Michalik, Chelsey Crisp, David Tennant, Hugh Skinner, Jimena Larraguivel, Marli Siu, Nick Blood, Nicole Sadie Sawyerr, Paulo Constanzo, Stephen Kunken |
| Key crew: | John Morton, Catherine Gosling Fuller, Emma Lawson, Jon Petrie, |
| Channel: | BBC iPlayer, BBC1 |
| Length: | 29 minutes |
| Episodes: | 6 |
| Broadcast date: | 8th April 2026 |
| Country: | UK |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
When we first met Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), he was managing a team involved in the organising the London 2012 Olympics. We followed him again after he’d moved into BBC management in W1A.
He’s now been appointed as the Director of Integrity of the Oversight team for the organisation of the 2026 football World Cup – jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
During his time chairing meetings of the Strategic Operations Group, his team have to deal with such controversial decisions as which cities should host the semi-finals, how to mitigate the environmental impacts of the tournament, what the official ball should look like, who should be the event’s official ambassador and how to mitigate the high temperatures players will face.
All the while, Ian faces interference from FIFA headquarters in Zurich, has to manage disagreements between American, Canadian and Mexican members of his team, work with the social media experts to ensure engagement of younger people, deal with accommodation issues – and navigate the office politics, which see him having a worse desk than FIFA’s man in Miami.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Hugh Bonneville’s bumbling executive will be familiar to anyone whose seen Twenty Twelve or W1A. Even his personal assistant from his BBC days, Hugh Skinner’s gormless but charming Will Humphries, makes an appearance – as if to suggest that Ian’s new team won’t – by themselves – be enough to engage audiences.
And that suggestion, sadly, is right – the directors of sustainability, communications, liaison, player welfare, logistics and business & legal provide aren’t ogres, grotesques or caricatures or pen-pushing administrators – they have almost nothing to do with their job titles and appear, largely, to have been hired to ensure representation from all of the host nations.
This provides the opportunity for arguments over whether matches should be held in the US or Mexico – but these are not conversations that you’d expect to be had by the director of communications and the director of business and legal.
While there’s little underlying logic in the narrative, it shouldn’t be a problem if the material is funny or interesting enough, but do viewers care who can do the most keepy-uppies or whether a female footballer should be brought in to replace David Beckham – or indeed whether the director of sustainability is going through a messy divorce?
And anyone familiar with Ian Fletcher will have seen and heard almost all of the jokes before – even David Tennant’s narrator’s idiosyncratic style is less funny the third time around and a running joke about the BBC not being able to say F*FA for legal reasons already feels old by the start of episode 2.
One of the targets of this type of comedy is the process of decision-making by committee – but it’s as if this programme itself was designed by committee – make sure we’ve got the environment in there – we must do social media – let’s push female footballers to the front of the male game – oh, and add a frisson of sexual tension – but then forgetting to add memorable characters or entertaining storylines.
It’s watchable enough, but there’s just nothing really to it. It’s just like a worse version of something that used to be good. Disappointingly dull, predictable, rather desperate and unnecessary.
Sadly, Twenty Twenty Six is instantly forgettable – but for football fans, there’s still the real thing to look forward to – and to anyone else, there are Twenty Twelve and W1A to look back at.