Cast your mind back to 2012. It was the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, the Korean dance craze “Gangnam Style”, and – who could forget – the London Olympics. I might have my rose-tinted glasses on, but it was a happier, simpler time – a time when we could all have a good laugh.
Take comedy series Twenty Twelve (which actually premiered the previous year) and its 2017 follow-up W1A, mockumentaries that skewered first the lead-up to the Olympics and then the BBC as a corporation obsessed with red tape and bureaucracy. Back then, we mostly trusted the Olympics committee and the BBC to do their best, even if – as both series showed – there were many barriers, ranging from the frustrating to the ridiculous, in their way. It was a time when jovially taking the mick out of big, powerful corporations was actually quite funny.
Not so in 2026, as proven by the series’ next iteration, Twenty Twenty Six. Set in the Fifa offices in Miami, where the oversight team are preparing for the upcoming World Cup, we once again meet Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) as he takes on the important role of director of integrity. And yes, that is a real title at the football governing body.
As usual, Fletcher struggles to grasp a hold of his team and make them do work that actually makes any sense. In the opening episode, their job is to decide where the two semi-final matches should be in the host nations of the USA, Canada and Mexico. The Canadian team member refuses to make a decision (or, in fact, have any opinion on anything), the American is brash and rude, while the Mexican woman is loud and intent on having a semi-final in Guadalajara, despite it not even being in the running.
It’s all deeply unfunny, and not just because there aren’t really any jokes. It’s because over the past few years, bodies like Fifa have proved to be inept and self-serving – all about the profit rather than the people it pretends to provide for. Ripe for a piss take, right? Not when the problems are so dark and the BBC is under so much scrutiny.
It’s hard to laugh at Fifa as the fluffy, disorganised company it is presented as in Twenty Twenty Six (Photo: Expectation/BBC)The last World Cup, for example, was held in Qatar, a country notable for its questionable human rights record when it comes to treatment of migrant workers, women and its LGBTQ+ citizens. Fifa also recently awarded US President Donald Trump with its inaugural (read: made-up) “peace prize” – this to a man who has since threatened that “a whole civilisation will die” in the Iran war.
With that context, it’s hard to laugh at Fifa as the fluffy, disorganised company it is presented as in Twenty Twenty Six. The series isn’t even allowed to say the word “Fifa” for legal reasons, as explained by David Tennant’s voiceover, so its bleeped over every time to minimal comic effect. It might not be focused on the BBC’s internal workings anymore, but it’s still broadcast on BBC Two; it’s beholden to that famous impartiality.
All this mucky corporate wrongdoing is surely the same reason that W1A has transformed into a new series, rather than come back wholesale. Accusations against the BBC have only grown in number and severity since it was last on TV, with scandals including (yet certainly not limited to) Huw Edwards’s conviction, bullying on Strictly, sexual harassment on MasterChef, being sued by Trump, and most recently, the sacking of Radio 2 Breakfast Show host Scott Mills. These are all dark, if not disturbing, events that cannot be made light of – nor ignored.
If Twenty Twenty Six was brave enough to really go there and stick the boot into Fifa’s dodgy cultural record, then perhaps it would be worth our time. But as it stands, it’s just a boring mockumentary devoid of any humour or bite, much like the droning meetings it makes us sit through. In fact, it could very well have been an email.
‘Twenty Twenty Six’ continues on Wednesday at 10pm on BBC Two
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