Characters from Twenty Twelve and W1A will reportedly return in a spin-off centred around FIFA. Here are the details.
Sarah Parish, who played Anna Rampton in the original comedy series W1A, has revealed on That Gaby Roslin Podcast that a spin-off show based on the FIFA international football association. was in the works. She also revealed that W1A co-star Hugh Bonneville would be reprising his role.
Though Parish said the show was being written according to the British Comedy Guide, she said she would not be in it, but that she suspected Hynes would return. There has been no official confirmation from the BBC, but it would fit with the previous series precedent of writing a comedy about a real forthcoming event, in this case the FIFA World Cup in 2026.
W1A was written by John Morton, who made his name with the radio and subsequent television adaptation of People Like Us, an acutely observed mockmentary starring Chris Langham as inept interviewer Roy Mallard. It ran for two series, with a third series planned but never produced due to being too similar to a new sitcom in production at the time – Ricky Gervais’ and Stephen Merchant’s The Office.
In 2010, Morton created Twenty Twelve, which satirised the politics of the administrative team behind the 2012 Olympics. It starred Hugh Bonneville as Ian Fletcher, the perpetually stressed head of the committee, and Jessica Hynes as Siobhan Sharpe, a PR executive who speaks almost entirely in meaningless buzzwords. Other cast members included Olivia Colman, Amelia Bullmore, Vincent Franklin and Karl Theobald.
Bonneville and Hynes reprised their roles in W1A, which ran for two series between 2014 and 2016. It saw them move to senior positions in the BBC, the title referring to the location of Television Centre in London. The show poked fun at the bureaucracy of the organization through the ineptitude, indecisiveness and inefficiency of the characters. The cast recently reunited for a sketch for Comic Relief, which you can watch here.
More on the FIFA-flavoured W1A as we get it.
