Pages

Thursday 14 May 2015

W1A

In my opinion, this has been the best thing on the telly for a long time. The characters are a superb mix of complete plonkers and sensible people, with the sensible people trying to do a sensible job while the plonkers throw random hand grenades around, which the sensible folks have to catch and defuse. If they can.

Apparently, it's about the BBC. But actually, it's about any large corporation with an ill-defined mission. Roles such as "Head of Values" and "Head of Better" sound like people I've met in the past; the inability to make a decision about anything, the totally clueless Will (who very occasionally comes up with a truly great idea, but is incapable of doing something as simple as stuffing envelopes without causing a disaster). The PR woman who talks in meaningless cliches. And the whole thing revolves around the "Head of Values" in the way that Beyond Our Ken revolved around Kenneth Horne; he's slightly bewildered by all the nonsense around him, yet manages to A) take it all in his stride and B) pluck order from the jaws of chaos ... only to see chaos resurgent.

All the characters are excellent; the incompetents repeatedly demonstrating their incompetence while the others just do the best they can with what they've got. You can see it on the BBC iPlayer.

The only thing I can compare it to is "The thick of it". Yes. No. Yes. Brilliant.

No comments:

Post a Comment