Hugh Bonneville’s character Ian Fletcher seems to be able to keep his teams’ eyes on a very high-profile prize despite everyone having their own agenda and the big bosses contradicting him at every turn. We saw that in the Olympic-centric mockumentary Twenty Twelve and the BBC-centric parody W1A. Now Ian is helping organize the World Cup in Twenty Twenty Six.
Opening Shot: “Monday morning in Miami, somewhere in Florida, and Ian Fletcher is on a journey,” says a befuddled narrator (David Tennant). Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) looks out the back window of a car.
The Gist: Ian has an extensive resume in leading oversight organizations for massive events, as he is probably best known for being the Head of Deliverance for the 2012 London Olympics and the Head of Values at the BBC. Now he’s been hired by F**A (bleeped out due to legal reasons) to be Director of Integrity of the oversight team for the 2026 W***ld C** (also bleeped out for legal reasons), the world’s biggest soccer torunament.
He’s greeted by Eric van Dupuytrens (Alexis Michalik), the liaison between F**A and the oversight team and his super-efficient assistant Emily Nash (Nicole Sadie Sawyerr). He’s given a tiny desk in the middle of the open office plan, which makes him feel conspicuous, so he moves to an open desk by a window, which was occupied by his predecessor and not offered to him, for some reason.
It’s 200 days before the tournament starts, and Ian’s first order or business is to choose the locations for the semi-finals. Given that there are about a dozen host cities to choose from, in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, it’s not an easy task, but the choices seem to be down to Los Angeles, Vancouver and Miami.
The Strategic Operations Group (SOG), all seem to make their own endorsements. Gabriela de la Rosa (Jimena Larraguivel), VP of Optics and Narrative, who is from Mexico, wants Guadalajara to host, even though it’s not on the shortlist. Not coincidentally, Owen Mitchell (Stephen Kunken), VP of Logistics and Execution, throws in for Vancouver in his native Canada. Nick Castellano (Paulo Costanzo), VP of Business and Legal, and lover of f-bombs, interrupts Sarah Campbell (Chelsey Crisp), VP of Sustainability and Climate Strategy, when Ian asks her about the environmental impact.
The next day, Sarah takes a meeting about powering the venues via the gasses created by sewage treatment from the venues’ bathrooms. Phil Plank (Nick Blood), VP of Pitch Protocols, defends Los Angeles in another SOG meeting without saying why. Ian notices that in every SOG meeting, Emily brings Eric a coffee or tea without saying a word. The social media team posts about Sarah’s wastewater initiative under the heading “The Power of Poop” and get MrBeast’s attention. Ian and the SOG attend Miami Day and are trapped when they find out that F**A picked Atlanta and Dallas as the semifinal cities.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by John Morton, Twenty Twenty Six continues Ian Fletcher’s adventures in big event oversight, which started on the series Twenty Twelve and continued on the sequel series W1A. The mockumentary format has a similar feel to the classic series of the genre, like The Office.
Our Take: The fascinating part of Twenty Twenty Six, as with the aforementioned series that featured Bonneville as Ian Fletcher, is that Ian remains positive and businesslike in the face of bureaucratic madness and co-workers who all have their own agendas. As evidenced by his first meetings with SOG, Ian’s job is to try to wrangle all of these personalities and get things moving in one direction, all while F**A makes their own decisions independent of the oversight team’s recommendations. There’s a reason why Ian got the job only six-plus months before the tournament started, as he finds out in the second episode.
Lots of the laughs in Twenty Twenty Six come from Tennant’s confused and disinterested narrator, who tends to revel in the weird titles each person in the office has but seems to not care about details like where Miami is in Florida.
But the members of SOG definitely have their moments, as does the social media team — social mediathought leader Madison Flynn (Erin Kellyman), thread analyst Zach Linksfeld (Joe Hewetson) and sentiment curator Mia So (Marli Siu). The social media team seem to be particularly inept at making soccer palatable for a younger, American audience who has no idea who any of the players are, and they seem to be on a different wavelength than the rest of the staff.
As the calm in the middle of the storm, though, Bonneville keeps things from spiraling out of control. Bonneville is great at playing an effective leader who may be annoyed when the powers that be make decisions that throw monkey wrenches into his plans, but he just takes those setbacks and plows ahead, dragging his more emotional team along with him.
Usually, in these kinds of workplace comedies the boss is the one making things tough on the team, either through ineptness or other glaring personality flaws. So it’s refreshing to see that Ian just wants to get the job done, even if part of that job is getting everyone on the same page.
Performance Worth Watching: We’ve already talked about Bonneville, so we’ll talk about Chelsey Crisp as Sarah Campbell, who seems to be the only semi-sane voice in the office, and maybe the only the one Ian will make a personal connection with.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Ian is introduced to his new assistant, and it’s a familiar face: Will Humphries (Hugh Skinner), the well-intentioned but not-very-bright intern from Ian’s time at the BBC.
Sleeper Star: Nicole Sadie Sawyerr’s character Emily is so brutally effiicient that she can modify documents that someone else has shared from their desktop on Zoom.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that when MrBeast liked the “Power of Poop” post, we got the significance of it right away. The purpose of the joke is that no one over 30 should know who he is.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Twenty Twenty Six is a funny take on a workplace focused on putting together one of the world’s biggest sporting events, helmed by a person who is experienced with all the craziness and somehow manages to get things done in spite of it.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
