This opening episode to the second series should have felt impressively prescient, airing so soon after Clarkson’s real-life sacking. The fact that it doesn’t is proof of W1A’s greatest challenge to productivity moving forward (as it were); a BBC sitcom about the BBC will always be too cosy to be truly cutting.
If the real-life Head of Values is comfortable with this level of self-mockery, then we can only assume that the uncensored reality is even more absurd, and wish we were watching that instead. It’s a tonal problem that W1A’s predecessor Twenty Twelve avoided by airing in the immediate run-up to the London Olympics. Back then, disastrous humiliation was still a very real possibility.
Read more: BBC staff admit W1A is close enough to the real thing
W1A, TV review: The ghost of Jeremy Clarkson looms large
Writer John Morton has been smart, therefore, to allow his series to evolve into a satire of corporate culture in general, rather than the Beeb in particular. Anyone who’s ever worked in a large organisation will recognise the little frustrations and indignities that made up this episode: the corporatese gobbledegook (especially that dialect unique to PR Siobhan Sharpe), the middle-managers with nonsensical job titles and, of course, the interminable meetings in which nothing ever gets decided.
Even those with no office experience could have enjoyed the broad farce that was BBC Head of Security Dave Green facing off against his Clarence House opposite number over malfunctioning bollards. Phone Shop’s Andrew Brooke and RSC veteran Samuel West made an unexpectedly good pairing.
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