Twenty Twelve

Did You Know?

• Some of the first athletes arriving for the 2012 Olympics suffered delays because their bus drivers were unfamiliar with London, closely resembling the plot of episode 2.
• The programme won Best Sitcom at the British Comedy Awards 2011 and again at the BAFTAs in May 2013.

Plot

The fictional Olympic Deliverance Commission (ODC) is at the centre of this comedy series, tasked with pulling off the 2012 London Summer Games. The ODC’s management constantly wrestles with logistical snags, production blunders, infrastructure failures, and difficult people. Ian Fletcher, the Head of Deliverance, runs the show and is mostly competent, but he spends much of his time fixing public relations disasters caused by his colleagues. A quiet storyline in the first series hints that his marriage to a successful lawyer is falling apart, which finally erupts in episode six.

His personal assistant, Sally, clearly has feelings for him, though neither ever says so out loud. Siobhan Sharpe, the Head of Brand through her firm Perfect Curve, is energetic but hopelessly vague, answering every problem with empty phrases and never silencing her phone during meetings. The other managers find her grating, especially Nick Jowett, the Head of Contracts, a blunt Yorkshireman who shoots down ideas without offering any of his own and never misses a chance to mention where he’s from.

Jowett steps in as Acting Head of Deliverance in the second series when Ian is sidelined. Kay Hope, Head of Sustainability, is responsible for planning what happens to the Olympic venues after the Games. She insists that Legacy and Sustainability are completely different things, though nobody ever bothers to explain how. She frequently brings up being a single mother after a nasty divorce and worries constantly about how she looks to the public.

In series two, Fi Healey arrives as the new Head of Legacy, and she immediately becomes Kay’s rival because she is younger, ambitious, and politically sharp; the two clash repeatedly. Graham Hitchens, Head of Infrastructure, acts as if he knows everything about London’s transport and traffic, but he is actually clueless, misses deadlines, and regularly annoys officials.

Reviews

Reviews for episode 1 were mixed, commenting that it was milder in its satire than they expected; Ed Cumming in The Telegraph stated 'Perhaps it just needs some time to settle. Though it was very funny in parts, the first episode of Twenty Twelve suggests that the series, like the actual cost of the Olympics, might hit slightly wide of its ample target.' Likewise, Sam Wollaston in The Guardian suggested that due to the participation of Seb Coe it was 'on song': 'Biting satire this isn't. It's nibbling satire, delivered by Garra Rufa fish...The Thick of It is a lot more entertaining...I don't think that politicians were removing their shoes, rolling up their trousers and queuing up for cameos in The Thick of It'.

Brian Viner, writing in The Independent was more impressed by Coe's cameo: 'There is surely no other country in the world that would laugh at itself in this way, even persuading the vast project's principal mover-and-shaker, in our case the Rt Hon Lord Coe KBE, to participate in the joke'. He went on to commend the series '...I was hooked anyway, by the mischief in John Morton's script and the beautifully nuanced performances of, in particular, Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes'.

Reviewing the series as a whole, Viner stated that the series was 'always amusing and sporadically very funny... It's hard to think of a spoof documentary that has been more fortuitously timed than Twenty Twelve.' It was widely commented upon in the press that the day after the broadcast of the first episode, which features problems with the 1,000-day countdown clock, the real-life clock in Trafalgar Square broke soon after it had been launched by Lord Coe and London mayor Boris Johnson.

An additional coincidence occurred when some of the first athletes to arrive in London for the Olympics suffered delays; their bus drivers were unfamiliar with London and unable to find the Olympic Park, in scenes that closely resembled the plot of episode 2. Twenty Twelve has been criticised as bearing a strong resemblance to the Australian mockumentary series The Games, a similar series set before the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Writer of The Games John Clarke said, 'We worked very hard on that project and we had long conversations with these people who've now done a show like that in Britain'.

Awards and nominations

The programme was the winner of the Best Sitcom category at the British Comedy Awards 2011, while Jessica Hynes received the Best Comedy Performance award for her role from the Royal Television Society. For his role in Twenty Twelve Osy Ikhile was nominated for 'Best TV Comedy Performance' at the Black International Film Festival and Music Video & Screen Awards. In May 2013, the programme was awarded title of 'Best Sitcom' at the annual BAFTA awards, with star Olivia Colman also picking up the award for 'Best Female Comedy Performance', a category in which co-star Jessica Hynes was also nominated. Hugh Bonneville also received a nomination for his role of Head of Deliverance, Ian Fletcher.

Sequels

After the final episode had aired, there was speculation in the media about a third series with the team liaising with the organisation team of the Rio de Janeiro games in 2016, or becoming management consultants. When asked about whether the hit show could return, main star Bonneville said, 'Absolutely. They could go and help with the organisation of the Rio Games in 2016...but ultimately, this is a crack team that could go anywhere and manage anything – the City, say, or the armed services.

The NHS also needs rebranding. They could get Ian in to announce, "If health is about anything, it's about managing expectations. We have got to get people to appreciate there are a lot of positive things about ill health. We need to make it sexy."'

A sequel was announced by the BBC in late 2013 and broadcast 19 March to 9 April 2014. Named W1A, it follows Ian Fletcher (Bonneville) and Siobhan Sharpe (Jessica Hynes) as they pursue new careers as part of the BBC management team. A second series was commissioned in September 2014 and broadcast 23 April to 14 May 2015. A third series began airing on 18 September 2017.

A further sequel was announced in 2025. Titled Twenty Twenty Six, it will see Hugh Bonneville reprise his role as Ian Fletcher, as he joins the Oversight Team in Miami as part of preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Further cast members announced include Nick Blood, Chelsey Crisp, Paulo Costanzo, Stephen Kunken, Jimena Larraguivel, Alexis Michalik, and Belinda Stewart-Wilson. As with the original series, Twenty Twenty Six will be written and directed by John Morton.

In September 2025, it was further announced that Hugh Skinner would reprise his W1A role of Will Humphries, while David Tennant would return as narrator. Additional cast members Marli Sui, Nicole Sadie Sawyerr, Joe Hewetson, and Erin Kellyman were also announced.