Carol Vorderman and Clare Balding battle it out to host the new BBC show Britain’s Tastiest Village as the W1A team realise they may have made slight error when Twitter raises its head.
The ramifications from last week’s episode kick us off as the new BBC Head of Values Ian Fletcher, played by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, has to answer to Jenni Murray from BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on the issues of both ageism and sexism regarding the appointment of female presenters in the corporation.
It’s not unlike the Thick of It episode where politicians faced off with Richard Bacon on BBC 5Live with chaos in the control as both Tracey Pritchard and Siobhan Sharpe battle it out over the aforementioned Vorderman and Balding. The former, played by BAFTA winning actress Monica Dolan (Appropriate Adult), is another superb creation for the series and her “I’m not being funny, like,” is just too grotesquely real and familiar for comfort.
Jessica Hynes’s PR guru Siobhan Sharpe is back on top form as she enters Ian, unwittingly, onto Twitter. His disgust and bewilderment at the phrase “bucket-sized the whole audience” with regards to one of his tweets is hilarious.
Bonneville again proves his comic nous with a pitch perfect performance, none more so evident in his retort to Sharpe’s “instant penetration for the gay community. You’ve hit gay oil here” (with regards to being retweeted by Danni Minogue), “Perfect for Radio 4,” comes his droll and expertly delivered line.
The fighting over Vorderman and Balding is felt elsewhere as the two actually turn up to meet the BBC to discuss the new Sunday night appointment to view show, Britain’s Tastiest Village. Both are under the impression they are still engaged on it. “I just got this text out of nowhere,” comes the announcement from David Wilkes as he realises Clare hasn’t been released from the project.
Rufus Jones (Hunderby) is almost mesmerising as the appallingly annoying and cloying BBC employee desperate to please everyone and managing no-one. His repetition of the line is priceless, matching his ineffectiveness and misunderstanding within the corporation.
However, the top prize for unmatched idiocy, for the second week in a row, must go to intern Will. Hugh Skinner’s performance is brain-scratchingly and fist-clenchingly dumb (in a brilliant way) as the beyond clueless youngster. “I love horses” says it all upon meeting television’s Clare Balding.
But, like last week, it’s the narration that elicits the most laughs in this episode. Writer/director John Morton’s lines are sublimely read by Doctor Who’s David Tennant, the highlight occurring during Vorderman’s “sacking” – “their task is to find a way of breaking the bad news to Carol in such a way that it doesn’t sound like a giant and protracted cock-up.” Divine.
W1A shows no signs of abating in its savage satire of the media and hopefully we’ll be enjoying this gold nugget for a long time to come.
Aired at 10pm on Wednesday 26 March 2014 on BBC Two.
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