{"id":520900,"date":"2026-04-09T06:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520900\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T06:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T06:03:09","slug":"twenty-twenty-six-review-hugh-bonnevilles-world-cup-comedy-wields-jokes-as-subtly-as-foam-mallets-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520900\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Twenty Six review \u2013 Hugh Bonneville\u2019s World Cup comedy wields jokes as subtly as foam mallets | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a Monday morning in Miami and Ian\u00a0Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville<\/a>) is in a meeting. The meeting has been set up to action another\u00a0meeting, the outcome of which will\u00a0be actioned \u2013 or at least consciously tabled\u00a0\u2013 at a third, or possibly seventh, meeting. The meeting is also a meeting in a\u00a0deeper sense, in that it is an opportunity for Ian, the \u201cincoming director of integrity\u201d at the organising body for world football (which, states the\u00a0narrator, David\u00a0Tennant, \u201cwe\u2019re unable to name for legal reasons\u201d), to establish his place in a corporate culture\u00a0that is \u201cirretrievably American\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShall we begin?\u201d, Ian asks his new colleagues. \u201cOh\u00a0my God,\u201d gasps the sustainability tsar, Sarah Campbell (Chelsey Crisp), pressing the palm of her hand swooningly to her breastbone. \u201cSoooo\u00a0British!\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the sort of thing that Ian finds himself up against in the six-part mockumentary series Twenty\u00a0Twenty Six. That is: irretrievable Americans. Not to mention the odd implacable Mexican. And several dense Britons. And a Belgian called Eric, who says\u00a0things such as: \u201cI am the conduit,\u201d and has one of\u00a0those\u00a0beards that looks as if it\u2019s made of sand.<\/p>\n

On to 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: \u201cWhat is the story here?\u201d for\u00a0long enough to ensure that the forthcoming World\u00a0Cup<\/a> goes off without a hitch. Good luck with that, as they say.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t mention Fifa \u2026 the oversight team in Twenty Twenty Six. Photograph: BBC\/Expectation Entertainment\/Jack Barnes\/PA<\/p>\n

We have, of course, met Ian before. He was the head of\u00a0deliverance at the Olympic Deliverance Commission\u00a0in the Bafta-winning Twenty Twelve and\u00a0then head of values at the BBC in the self-satirising W1A<\/a>. Now, in John Morton\u2019s belated threequel, this crumpled husk of amiable vexation finds himself \u201cin\u00a0Miami, somewhere in Florida\u201d where the management doublespeak comes with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and potted palms are as ubiquitous as non\u00a0sequiturs. In almost all other respects, however, it\u2019s mildly satirical business as\u00a0usual.<\/p>\n

The opening episode finds the team arguing over which cities should hold the \u201csoccer semi-finals\u201d (the\u00a0words \u201cFifa\u201d and \u201cCup\u201d are repeatedly bleeped out, due to the aforementioned legal reasons). Later\u00a0episodes find the team arguing over wooden condoms and David Beckham<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As with W1A and Twenty Twelve, nobody in Twenty\u00a0Twenty Six seems to know why they\u2019re there. But while W1A had berks of the calibre of Jason\u00a0Watkins\u2019 Simon Harwood and Jessica Hynes\u2019 Siobhan Sharpe, Twenty Twenty Six has a collection of roughly daubed caricatures, each of whom has been\u00a0assigned a joke that is subsequently wielded in\u00a0the manner of an oversized foam mallet.<\/p>\n

Some of\u00a0these jokes are more successful than others.\u00a0Alexis\u00a0Michalik is very good as Eric Van Depuytrens, a\u00a0plonkeur without portfolio who drifts around in a self-guffed cloud of gnomic complacency. And huzzah (and phew) for the return\u00a0of\u00a0W1A\u2019s hapless\u00a0Will\u00a0Humphries (the brilliant\u00a0Hugh Skinner) as Ian\u2019s assistant, a man visibly\u00a0haunted by his own stupidity. But\u00a0then, woe,\u00a0there is Gabriela De La Rosa (Jimena Larraguivel)\u00a0whose thing is that she is an angry Mexican woman, a joke that, even for a comedy as\u00a0cosily middle-aged as Twenty Twenty Six, seems\u00a0just\u00a0ever so slightly \u2026 off.<\/p>\n

The camera jitters around in the customary mockumentary fashion, zooming in on the pointless\u00a0whiteboards and circling the oversight team\u2019s\u00a0skulls like an anxious uncle asking about biscuits at a wake. It all feels quite dated and tired, with\u00a0several scenes wandering off before the punchline, possibly to take a\u00a0closer look at the potted palms. Tennant\u2019s voiceover is pitch perfect, but the absurdist energy that powered Morton\u2019s previous projects is, alas, no longer there. What\u2019s more, the series appears unsure of its targets. Whereas W1A placed a whoopee cushion firmly under Auntie\u2019s buttocks, Twenty Twenty Six gives Fifa and, indeed, football in general a\u00a0bewilderingly wide berth, opting\u00a0instead to lumber around in the not enormously\u00a0rewarding space between \u201ccorporate idiocy\u201d and\u00a0\u201cAmericans\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the story here?\u201d we might ask, at a meeting.\u00a0If only there had been a meeting to action the\u00a0outcome of that meeting, Twenty Twenty Six might\u00a0not feel like such a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n

Twenty Twenty Six aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a Monday morning in Miami and Ian\u00a0Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is in a meeting. The meeting has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-520900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}