Hugh Bonneville is at his best in this timely comedy (just don’t mention FIFA)

Twenty Twenty Six ★★★

Fans of British comedy won’t need an introduction to Ian Fletcher. He first appeared in the mockumentary series Twenty Twelve as the “head of deliverance” at the London Olympics, a fancy title for fixer of PR and logistical nightmares. The character returned years later in the fabulous W1A, where Fletcher was “head of values” at the BBC. The show gleefully mocked the broadcaster and bureaucratic meddling with scenarios that mirrored real-world people and events.

Fletcher, as played by Hugh Bonneville, is an urbane though colourless public service manager who has somehow floated to the top. A result, perhaps, of his decent nature, his patience for fools and sincere belief in management slogans. Surrounding him was an ensemble of sharply drawn idiosyncratic characters, whose interactions were often as uncomfortable as they were sidesplitting funny.

Fletcher is the creation of writer John Morton, whose career took off with the pioneering though now forgotten mockumentary People Like Us. His brand of comedy might lean towards smugness, but the parody of everyday mediocrity embedded in the “managerial class” is immediately familiar to anyone who has interacted with, let alone worked in, a bureaucracy.

This new six-part series puts Fletcher in Miami – “somewhere in Florida” as the sardonic voiceover narration (once again by David Tennant) helpfully informs us – as director of integrity for “the biggest sporting event the world has ever seen”. One of several running gags is that references to the 2026 World Cup, FIFA, its president and shadowy regulations are bleeped for legal reasons.

So instead of eccentric Brits, we get hot-headed Mexican Gabriella (VP of optics and narrative), a short-fused New York lawyer running business affairs, a Teflon-coated attaché from Belgium who is back-channelling intel to FIFA, an earnest American running sustainability who has a serious crush on Fletcher, a Canadian logistics expert who doesn’t have a position on anything, and a gaggle of clownish Gen Z-ers running social media. Catnip for the fans, Fletcher’s inept intern in W1A Will Humphries (Hugh Skinner) also returns as baffled and clueless as ever.

There’s a running list of disasters for the oversight team to deal with, from an official football with an embedded chip that has conspiracy theorists in overdrive, to a US president named Trump, to gaffes about condoms for players.

Fourteen years on from Twenty Twelve, the seams in the concept are beginning to strain. Some unsubtle race and age stereotypes in Twenty Twenty Six are more likely to elicit a sharp intake of breath than laughs, and the fly-on-the-wall technique that was once innovative and fresh has now become a standard fixture of workplace comedies and sitcoms everywhere. The earlier shows made hay by casting well-known actors into roles where they played against type; here the cast is mostly unknown and unable to milk that comedic vein.

But Bonneville’s depiction of Fletcher remains as fresh and endearing as ever. That he pulls it off with a straight face is masterful. Like Rob Sitch’s put-upon bureaucrat Tony in Utopia, he is a glass-half-full idealist thwarted by bureaucratic red-tape, group-think and political compromise. And that’s the point these shows make: that regardless of the privilege, wealth and influence these events and institutions wield, they’re not immune to the foibles, whims and imperfections of the people who run them.

Twenty Twenty Six airs Wednesdays at 9.25pm on ABC and ABC iview.

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