Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 2)
Ian Fletcher & 'W1A' - A Masterclass In Satire, With More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1)
The Plots
On the flip side though, there are the plots. It’s not that they’re necessarily bad at all, in fact some of them are actually very funny at their core, but one thing you realise very quickly, is that it’s definitely a “journey rather than the destination” type of show. This certainly isn’t a criticism, but just as in the rest of the show, the characters’ actions are almost all totally cartoonish, so too are the plot points, but that seems very much intentional. Take for instance the hour-long series 2 premiere. The b-plot with Lucy and David, as discussed, is great, but the main plot is the perfect example of the levels of farce being turned up to 11, while somehow being portrayed as almost routine or expected. To put it simply, the gang have two problems: a Prince Charles visit, and criticism and potential overtake from Sky (or, as bleeped in the show, S*y). So naturally, everything that can go wrong, as acknowledged by David Tennant in his narration, did go wrong. Siobhan and her team’s ideas for rebooting “BBC WINbeldon” are suitably moronic, and an incompetent security man means that rather than meeting Prince Charles, the team instead end up embarking on a wild goose chase all around the BBC. Siobhan nearly gets arrested over an unneeded bomb threat procedure, Simon ends up locked in the director general’s office, and Lucy then has to cover for everyone while the royal security look on befuddled, as half the greeting party trap themselves behind a revolving door. It’s absolutely bonkers, almost pantomime in a lot of ways, and yet for the most part, by some quirk of fate, they come out mostly unscathed. Ian and Lucy meet Charles, and Wimbledon is saved because intern Will, about to be made jobless, realised that his sister’s boyfriend is tennis player Joe Wilfred Tsonga. No, I’m not making that up. I suppose that is ultimately another dimension of the show’s humour as well. Because it’s not a drama, much like a cartoon, you can basically expect that by the end of the episode, everything would’ve, somehow, sorted itself out, or at least be on the way to doing so. That then creates a kind of nihilistic comedy in the fact that, no matter how high stakes something might seem, you’re laughing because, no matter what they do, even if they fuck it up royally, no pun intended, like with the rest of the show, they’ll just keep going anyway.
This is where Ian’s character really comes into its own. Given everything I’ve just mentioned, if you wanted to get really weird about it, you could essentially view the show, if you want, as a kind of simulated thought experiment. Basically, put a load of incompetent morons in a room, throw a load of random shit at them, and see what happens. Surely if left to their own devices, they would just spiral into a whirlwind of nonsense, and so it’s Ian’s job to try and divert them from that whirlwind. Often, as I’ve said already, watching Ian desperately try to go about this while the rest of his colleagues’ brains essentially shut down around him is hilarious enough, but he also manages to defy the “fixer stereotype”, oddly, by playing into it. He could just be the guy that fixes all the problems and that would be fair enough as a character archetype in a comedy programme, but it’s the extra layer that John imbues his character with that is so well done. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable, but often, when his levels of exasperation and the spiralling chaos around him are seemingly at tipping point, you see a change in him. A kind of quiet frustration of “right, I guess I’m having to deal with this then”, that essentially leads to him, many a time, pulling solutions or ad hoc wisdom completely out of his arse. Sometimes it’s with help from Lucy, or remembrance of an offhand comment from somebody, that seemingly, somehow diffuses the situation for the time being, at least a little bit. Sure, you could very easily argue that the increasing use, especially in series 3, of the “Ian saves the day… somehow” plot device to be lazy writing, and honestly, I won’t necessarily disagree. Certainly, its utilisation in the follow up series ‘Twenty Twenty-Six’ seems a little bit tired.
What I’d argue though is that, where the humour of it comes from in ‘W1A’s case, is that Ian’s just as surprised it worked as the audience themselves. He’s not coming at it with the self-assuredness of a cartoon superhero, but more a kind of confusion about how almost nobody bothers to call him out on what was clearly absolute blagged horseshit. It’s as if his job at the BBC essentially revolves around “yes, and-ing” himself to see if he’ll get away with it. Then again, if he does, he’s not complaining, so that’s all good. Again, the people around him definitely see this as an admirable quality, but similarly to Lucy, aside from herself, I’m sure no one truly realises how much he just saved their skin. Instead, he’s gifted with the equivalent of a pithy “hoorah”, but would you really expect anything else? So, you quickly realise that most of the plots are basically just scenarios that revolve around a given character’s ability to blag, or literally just have things happen to them (which I’ll get to more of soon). Then again, I’d say given the nature of the comedic style, that makes perfect sense. Tying in the experiment analogy from earlier, how everyone reacts is often more pivotal to the actual progression of the episode than the situations themselves. And yes, I know character reactions obviously inform the story beats and blah blah blah, but I’m sure you get what I mean.
The Characters
This final point does admittedly tie in with a lot of my praise of the writing, in particular praising characters like Lucy, Ian, and Neil, but there is definitely something to be said whereby viewing the show through a character driven lens gives it a whole different kind of strength. As I alluded to earlier, as the relationship between Ian and Lucy blossoms in series 3, not only does the programme remain a brilliantly absurd satire, but also, in another sense, transforms it into a kind of “us against the world” narrative, with Ian and Lucy using their own smarts and goodwill to navigate the shitstorm of higher management. Granted, I don’t think John Morton himself intended it to be a grand comment on corporate perseverance, but it helps to have characters that you not only like but actually end up properly rooting for. Especially the case in a show where many characters are deliberately vapid for comic reasons. That’s not to say the show in any way becomes swamped by melodrama, as the satirical deadpan edge is just as razor sharp as it always was, but the “drama” instead only becomes another layer to the brilliant proverbial cake. It works so well in fact that I found myself even rooting for the idiots to finally gain a conscience and follow in their footsteps.
Take Will the intern for example. Constantly throughout the series, Hugh Skinner’s performance of a totally hapless but well-meaning idiot is glorious, with some of his asides, including his prideful statement that he and Ian built his office together, are absolutely hilarious. At the same time, his “relationship” with colleague Izzy Gould, played by the fantastic Ophelia Lovibond, is certainly morally dubious, as he often hangs around her for weird amounts of time, or even takes secret pictures of her, as seen in the great “projector gag” in series 2. In any other hard-boiled show, you’d expect this to be some sort of psychopath origin story, and even in the context of comedy, these kinds of moments being played for laughs could leave a very weird taste in people’s mouths. John Morton though, somehow, still manages to make Will come across as a likeable underdog. He gets framed almost as if he’s too stupid to be genuinely malicious, and strangely enough, it really works. Though, in turn, this does leave you screaming at the screen, begging him to get SOMETHING right, and it seems that Izzy has this same soft spot, much to the chagrin of her sarcastic, no-nonsense coworker Jack. Will really comes to his own in Series 3 though as well. Leading up to the launch of BBC Me, Will seems interested in helping out with as much as possible, even if just to impress Izzy. Of course, many of his efforts go hilariously awry, with his attempts to fix them often just making it worse, in an almost slapstick way. Even so, he seems to realise the error of his ways, and in his typically oblique manner, sets out on a final mission to fix it that feels genuinely heroic. Maybe it’s just because there’s such little character development in this show (very much by design, and equally to its credit), but times like this where you do see the evolution of a genuine character arc, leave me wanting to rip my shirt off and twirl it over my head in jubilation, and Will was the perfect character for it.
In terms of characters though, aside from the emotional core of Lucy and Ian, the most compelling would have to be Izzy. Being quite similar to Lucy in many ways as I mentioned earlier, what sets Izzy apart in how she’s written, is that again, like her counterpart, she’s one of the only characters within the show whose emotion doesn’t simply serve the comedy. Instead, it elevates her relatability and realism in so many instances, particularly in the relationship between her and Will. For a character viewed by 99% of the rest of the cast as a hapless moron, we see very early on that Izzy clearly has a soft spot for Will, though the reasoning as to why I’m still not entirely clear on. There are many times where both Ian and Izzy are directly in the crosshairs of his stupid decision making, and would in any normal circumstance be well within their rights to tell him to fuck off. Then again, as I’ve shown ad nauseam by now, the world of this show is anything but normal, so I can’t say I’m surprised that they don’t. Certainly, for the first two series, even if he does something great by accident, like his connection to Jo Wilfred Tsonga, Izzy does seem to approach him with a sort of “wounded puppy complex”, but upon the discovery of Will’s idea for ‘On Your Bike’, that’s when her character really gets interesting. Reason being that she seems to truly see something in him beyond that point, perhaps before anyone else, or even the audience do.
So, with the pre-requisite she can’t just tell him to fuck
off out of the window, one of the key dramatic components of the series becomes
her trying to fight Will’s battles, despite just how clearly stupid he is. Of
course, the comedy’s still maintained perfectly with her brilliant, barbed
exchanges with Jack, or, well, Will’s stupidity just being funny, which it
absolutely is, but there’s definitely more depth to it. There are even moments
with Will where the look on her face of pure bafflement suggests she’s wondering
if his stupidity is some kind of Andy Kaufman level satire, but at its core, their
friendship way more emotionally resonant than you would think. Sure, it’s basically
a “will he get the girl” love story, and there are moments when Izzy goes
really above and beyond when she absolutely doesn’t need to, but I think that’s
what makes it so resonant. It’s super basic, sure, but her willingness to damn
near lose her job for his sake on many occasions, plus what I’ve said in my defense
of Will as a character already, means that despite the bad decisions both
characters make, and in reality, how completely implausible it actually is,
when they get their happy ending in the finale, it still feels satisfying. Yet,
of course, the phrase “happy ending” might be pushing it a little bit with how
inconclusive it actually is, and given the show’s genius lies in revelling in
its own glibness much of the time, it couldn’t really happen any other way.
I think it’s worth going back in a little bit to something I said at the start of this segment too, because there’s still one more character I wanted to deep dive into before starting to wrap up, that being Anna Rampton. Played by the fantastic Sarah Parish, her deadpan demeanour and taciturn, ridiculous speech, while giving the illusion of utter, unflappable confidence, arguably distils the comic farce of the show better than any other character. Given that most of her dialogue is either the phrase “yes, exactly yes”, or, “the fact is [insert ridiculous assertion here]”, the more John chooses to hammer home just how paper thin her character actually is, the more hilarious it becomes, even to the point of being surreal and downright uncanny. So, how do you make a character hilarious for their complete lack of depth and droid-like social obliviousness even funnier? You do the least sensical thing possible and write her into a romance plot. Seeing Anna’s repeated attempts to be close to, and flirt with, Ian, in the second and particularly final series, has the same comic qualities of watching a just born calf attempting to walk for the first time. Whether it’s seeming to take every chance she can to get close to Ian, even if it makes absolutely no sense, or just doing things that would clearly make everyone else’s lives needlessly complicated, it’s hilarious because there’s clearly no way it would ever work. Whether it’s booking a taxi an hour early just so they could travel together, or showing up at meetings she’s not even in, combined with her robotic personality, it becomes almost instantly obvious what’s going on, with Ian definitely suspecting, and it’s all the funnier for it.
Perhaps the most hilarious moments though are when her natural stiffness and the concept of human emotions seem to butt heads. Take for instance the genuinely nice moment in series 2 when, while being incredibly nervous in preparing for a speech and needing to wear glasses, she lets Ian into the locked toilet. Of course, in this instance, Ian does what he’s best at and manages to build her self-esteem up a bit, albeit in an amusingly guarded way, saying in quite a civil voice, “[the glasses] certainly do it for me”, before she plants a kiss on his lips. As if the atmosphere wasn’t awkward enough, upon disconnecting, Anna states “sorry, lip gloss, otherwise I would have done it properly.” Of course, Ian knows that having “media corporate droid bot 5000” try to get off with him in the way she did probably meant the romance wasn’t to be, but hilariously, and somewhat frustratingly for us, she doesn’t quite get the memo. Honestly, if it was taken a few degrees further, her vacant demeanour and relentless personality could make a great horror character, but as is, it’s thankfully kept well within the reins of humour. The reason I said frustrating as a viewer is because it then leads on to maybe the most contentious plot line in the whole show, if there could be such a thing; the Ian-Lucy-Anna love triangle. It’s not frustrating because it’s bad, far from it, because it makes for some very hilarious moments, but for a different reason. It’s now that I want to refer back to what I said to start this section. “I found myself even rooting for the idiots to finally gain a conscience and follow in their footsteps.” What makes this storyline so great, and so hilarious, to me, is that they’ve given Anna some very welcome character depth, but despite that, it illustrates just how different Lucy and Ian are to their colleagues. Furthermore, the show seemingly takes delight in placing a decision before Ian that’s the equivalent of “lottery win vs. poison” and making it a lot more close-run than it has any right to be.
I think what makes it so much funnier, aside from just how
utterly mismatched the “romance rivalry” is, is exactly how Ian and Lucy’s
characters feed into it. It links back to an interaction between them in a pub
down the road from Broadcasting House in series 2. After considering quitting,
Lucy’s talking to Ian about her essentially being peer pressured by Anna into
the new ‘Head of Inclusivity’ job. Ian tells her that Anna “isn’t as stupid as
she looks”, to which Lucy, hilariously, albeit very politely asks, “isn’t she?
I can’t tell.” In essence that tells you everything you need to know. Ian tries
his best to be as charitable as he can, whereas Lucy tries, but her patience is
ultimately wearing thin, and that’s exactly how the romance plot between the
three of them plays out. Every time Anna does something ridiculous, like show
up at his hotel room drunk, or pass out in the back of a taxi and deliriously
try to flirt with him, or recommend him
to her new American employers while briefing him on the layout of her house
(yes, that actually happens), it seems like all Ian can do is cordially play
along while Lucy just stands there awkwardly. I can’t blame her really,
although it is admittedly hilarious to watch from where I’m sat. Now, granted,
if we got a deeper aspect to Anna’s character beyond her liking Ian, this might
be a different story, but at least from what we see in the show, there’s
basically nothing else going on up there. It’s a bit like watching a fish try
to run a 5k through sheer force of willpower. Weirdly though, I think that’s
why it works. For as much as I was screaming at my TV by the end, like “FOR
FUCK SAKE IAN DON’T DO IT”, this wouldn’t really work with any other character.
Tracy and Neil have a kind of ridiculous personality that would make a romance
plot very funny, and the idea of Simon and Siobhan blabbering about absolutely
nothing in a doomed attempt at flirting does sound hilarious, but as far as the
vibe of the show, Anna makes perfect sense. For a show that has deadpan humour
down to an art form, surely it makes sense that a character literally built to
not have a personality gets a love plot. It’s ridiculous, and so perfect.
As a final note, not so much about the characters, but more for the show in general, the ending strikes me as perfect. With all the gang gathered at the BBC Me launch party, there’s still no end to the chaos. It’s chock full of hilarious moments of course, Tracy and Siobhan arguing about locking director general Tony Hall in the TARDIS while the others watch on in a mix of irritation, dread and intrigue being an obvious highlight. That and Ian’s speech made up mostly of empty nothing platitudes, punctuated by awkward “yay”s from Siobhan’s PR team. You really couldn’t imagine the show ending any other way. Perhaps more so than any other moment in the show though, the emotions really do hit. After a final, inevitably ridiculous interaction with David Wilkes (who may be her new boss in the foreseeable future), and as she looks on at Anna giving Ian schematics of her kitchen, you can practically feel the sense of doom emanating from Lucy. Cue the best, characteristically subtle dialogue in the programme. “Very nice speech” says Lucy. “Oh thanks” replies Ian. “I hope you stay… I really do.” For your sake Lucy, so do we. It’s quite bleak in many ways, honestly, but weirdly poignant all the same. You might have wondered why I’ve put so much emphasis on the seemingly barely visible emotional core of a deadpan comedy show. That is a valid question, but this dialogue genuinely made me go back and rewatch the whole show trying to find it. John is very good at hinting at it, but this proves he’s also fine just letting it out in the open.
Naturally though, we can’t be doing with emotions for too
long, and the ending does a fantastic job of comedically undercutting it. As
David Tennant delivers his final, characteristically generic bit of narration,
Lucy approaches Ian, grinning hopefully, while now, Anna is the one looking on.
She places BBC Me branded headphones on his head, the music swells, and… cut to
credits. In ANY other show, this would be lambasted as a lazy blue-balling of
the audience by the writer, but really, what else did we expect? It’s the same
level of one-dimensionality and deliberate anti-climax that made the ending to
‘Peep Show’ so divisive. For a show whose comedy, time and again, revolved
around plots that had almost no ultimate bearing on anything, and any genuine
dramatic tension was given the weight of wet paper, much to its benefit, this
ending suits it to a T. Again, it’s pointless, it’s ridiculous, slightly bleak
and existential, and thus the perfect cap off. So, for as long, winding, and
sometimes contradictory as this article series has been, what’s my ultimate
appraisal of the show? In short, with ‘W1A’, John Morton crafted one of the
greatest, most ingenious satires of modern times. The writing is razor sharp
and brilliantly perceptive, fantastically absurd, and joyfully revels in its
own farce, while creating an emotional core that is shockingly deep, and almost
never sacrificing the comedy. Sure, ‘Twenty Twenty-Six’ is great, but ‘W1A’
truly stands alone. In thirty years’ time, when historians are discussing the all-time
greats of British satire, the usual suspects will obviously be present. There
will sit Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris with ‘The Day Today’ and ‘Brass
Eye’, there will sit Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran with Rik Mayall’s ‘New
Statesman’, but alongside them, John Morton and ‘W1A.’ So that’s all good. Yes,
exactly, yes. Brilliant.
You can watch 'W1A' now on BBC iPlayer, with DVD box sets purchasable at HMV and other retailers
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