After 2012 which took a satirical look at the London Olympics and W1A which did the same for the BBC, John Morton’s new six part series 2026 on the US World Cup has launched on the BBC (six episodes on IPlayer).
There are some familiar characters not least Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) as Head of Integrity and his assistant Will Humphries (Hugh Skinner). As before David Tennant does the voice overs.
The question perhaps is whether Morton’s satirical approach which looks at management culture and meetings about meetings and in particular perhaps brand and reputation management can work when the real life event is taking place in Trump’s USA with an illegal war currently being pursued and ICE snatching people off the streets and hauling them off to concentration camps.
There is not much scope for humour there, 2026 is not on that page, but the backdrop is unavoidable.
So far I’ve watched just the first episode. There was some decent satire but very few laughs but when I rewatched W1A recently (all three series on the IPlayer 2014-17) there were still plenty of laughs.
Of course satire and comedy does not have to be funny haha. I think 2026 could have been in that territory but it would have needed to be more sharply political and that might have provoked another Trump lawsuit against the BBC. Hmmmm
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