The Hippest Kids In Town

Despite what Nat King Cole sings in the opening theme, there certainly isn’t any trouble ahead for Twenty Twelve, BBC4’s newest sitcom. On April 15th the BBC announced that Twenty Twelve had been recommissioned for a second series, and I immediately got to work on the construction of a giant clock, that will stand in my front garden, and will countdown, either backwards or forwards, to the start of the next series.

Twenty Twelve is the first new British sitcom of 2011 that has made me laugh consistently each week, and has me genuinely excited for every new episode. For those unfortunate souls that happened to miss the series, which finished its six episode run this past Monday, the show is a “mockumentary” following the trials and tribulations of the Olympic Planning Committee (or Olympic Deliverance Commission) on the road to the London 2012 Olympic Games. It was a topic begging for satire and series creator John Morton took the helm.

Ever since I knew John Morton was involved in Twenty Twelve I was eagerly anticipating the start of the series. Morton wrote what I consider to be one of the greatest works of comedy of all time, People Like Us, another “mockumentary” series, featuring Roy Mallard (played excellently by Chris Langham) as the likable yet hapless interviewer, following regular people with regular jobs. People Like Us was full of wonderful non-sequiturs, misinterpretations, and miscommunication, and captured that particular documentary style with perfection.

Many people think “mockumentary” was invented by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant with The Office, and while The Office is a tremendous example of the spoof-documentary, it certainly wasn’t the first. We can travel back to Beatlemania in the 1960s and take a look at A Hard Day’s Night, a feature film designed as a “documentary” about a day in the lives of The Beatles, and this was taken even further by Rob Reiner in the 1980s with This Is Spinal Tap, a “mockumentary” about a fictional rock band. And of course there were the comedy sketches of Monty Python and Victoria Wood that used a faux-documentary approach for their comic conceits.

But for me John Morton perfected the “mockumentary” format with People Like Us, he nailed a specific style of documentary that was extremely relevant and popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. And that’s why I was so excited when I discovered that John Morton was writing and directing Twenty Twelve, a sitcom that would be using a similar format, and I went in to the series seeing it as a much welcome extension of People Like Us.

But Twenty Twelve soon became less of an extension of People Like Us, and by episode six the series had accomplished more than enough to stand on its own. Unlike People Like Us, where each episode would follow a different set of characters, Twenty Twelve sticks with the same group of people and allows us to watch them develop, for better or worse, throughout the series, as we witness them deal with faulty traffic lights, uncovered bones on the plot for the aquatics centre, charisma-less Brand Ambassadors, and an angry Sebastian Coe!

Hugh Bonneville, last seen in period costume as the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, plays Head of Deliverance Ian Fletcher. Bonneville is perfect casting, he brings a warmth to the character that could have easily been neglected in somebody else’s shoes. Although Ian Fletcher is the “boss”, and therefore in the so called “David Brent” role, Bonneville does great in separating those characters. Ian Fletcher is not a sitcom-monster like Brent; he is fairly good at his job, understands his shortcomings (but often tries to bury them), and is relatively calm and mild-mannered for a man dealing with the immense frustration of organising the Olympic games, as well as a tortured relationship with his wife.

Jessica Hynes plays Head of Brand, Siobhan Sharpe, a not-as-cool-as-she-thinks-she-is PR woman that speaks in redundant expressions and filler-speech. Hynes does brilliantly here, its such a step away from her more well-known roles in Spaced and The Royle Family, and she tackles it head on. Again, its a character that could have simply been a sitcom-monster, and for the first couple of episodes Siobhan isn’t exactly likeable, but as the series progresses her lack of ability to do, well, pretty much anything, becomes sort of endearing, especially as the other characters don’t allow her to remain in control.

Filling out the cast are Olivia Colman as Sally, Ian’s PA, doing really well to rehabilitate her image as a sweet, caring woman, as Peep Show turned her character of Sophie in to an unlikeable, black-cauldron of a woman. Amelia Bullmore as Kay Hope, Head of Sustainability (not Legacy), who its just great to see on TV in general, her brief appearance in Bellamy’s People went to prove that Bullmore should be doing more television comedy. Karl Theobald as Graham Hitchins, Head of Infrastructure, a man who has incompetence down to a T (“This Friday?”). Vincent Franklin as Nick Jowett, Head of Contracts, who brings a no-bullshit approach to the proceedings, he’s from Yorkshire you know. People Like Us alumni David Tennant provides the narration, which grows increasingly more sarcastic with each episode. And finally, John Morton himself takes the role as politely intrusive interviewer, its a shame that it isn’t Chris Langham, but I suppose Morton is the next best choice.

It’s a superb cast, and Morton has created interesting characters for them to get their teeth stuck in to. Morton has a gift for writing recognisable characters from every day life and putting them in a situation that exposes their strengths and weaknesses. There isn’t a more appropriate situation than the London 2012 Olympics, nor a situation more ripe for comedy. It’s the ideal setting for Morton’s satirical comedy and appropriately bonkers dialogue. Morton comes up with such inventive dialogue that you sometimes have to go back and listen again, he makes his characters say the most ridiculous things that somehow sound reasonable on the first listen:

“If Ian’s task now is to be the caring doctor explaining to a hitherto relieved patient that unfortunately they got the test results mixed up, Anna’s task is to grasp that in fact she is going to die after all.”

Brilliant!

There was some controversy over plagiarism due to Twenty Twelve’s similarity to the hit Australian sitcom The Games. Now, I haven’t seen The Games, its on my “to-watch” list, so I can’t give a fair assessment on whether or not John Clarke and Ross Stevenson (creators of The Games) have any right to make such a claim, but what I will say, is that although the concepts are the same, Twenty Twelve has such a distinctive voice, that is so clearly John Morton’s, that I would be surprised if anything was directly ripped off as far as the humour and jokes go. 

I would urge comedy fans that missed Twenty Twelve to give it a go, especially if you are a fan of People Like Us, or sitcoms such as The Office and The Thick of It. It’s exciting that we have a full new series to come, and I’m assuming we’ll probably get a one-off special before the Olympics; there is so much more ground to cover, and we even have a pretty convincing romance brewing between Ian and Sally. Roll on 2012 for more Twenty Twelve!

All of the episodes are still available on the BBC iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zhzqw/Twenty_Twelve_Episode_1/

Favourite lines from Series 1:

“Inevitably, it’s Friday.”

“If it goes right then nobody notices, but if it goes wrong…”
“Everybody notices…”
“Well, first they notice, and then they die.”

“There’s too many wheels.”

“For the second time today, Ian is faced with the delicate task of helping someone who thought they were happy, to understand that actually they really aren’t.”

“In a perfect world, we’d have gone with our second choice…”

“I’m not really sure what there is to say about a 48 hour stony silence.”

“In 1979 he won a BAFTA for his film Intravenous, which has since gone on to achieve near cult status amongst those who saw it.”

“It’s an enclosed space in which to discover you’ve gotten horse shit on your trousers somehow.”

“No, David Walliams is not going to swim the Channel holding the Olympic torch.”

“The 1000 Day day day.”

“Do you know there’s a spelling error with the word Olympic?”
“Yeah, well that can be changed if you want.”

“For Ian, the Aquatics Centre has suddenly gone from being the week’s good news story to a mass grave, which isn’t what he wanted.”

by Martin Holmes