Twenty Twelve

Twenty Twelve: How to spot a fake ticket

There's only a couple of weeks left to apply for tickets to the 2012 London Olympics. However, fake ticket merchants are already emerging. As a result, the Twenty Twelve team offer up their advice to prevent being fooled by fake tickets...

Ex-athlete Dave Wellbeck is chosen as an ambassador to inspire young people about the forthcoming Olympic games, but despite his conscientious and loyal approach he has about as much charisma as a sweaty sports sock and fails to engage his ideals. This spoof about the preparations for the London 2012 Olympics only quietly mocks the games but it has its moments, and tonight's centre around Kay Hope (Amelia Bullmore) as she tries to defend the Olympic park wind turbine. "We need to make sustainability visible. If we lose that, then just what is 2012 about?" "Well, sport, and stuff like archery," comes the reply.

Yet another challenge for the Olympics 'deliverance team' in this docu-spoof: Roman remains have been found on the site of the aquatics centre, meaning a design rethink - would swimmers mind if they had to go through the cafeteria to get from changing rooms to pool? Here's hoping that life doesn't imitate art, given that last week the real-life Olympic countdown clock broke down not long after a Twenty Twelve episode about exactly that.

This third episode might not have the grand follies of the first two (the pointless clock and disastrous coach trip), but is just as amusing in its incidental detail. Ian's smitten PA, Sally, relays a message from Boris Johnson: "It was a lot of gosh and piffle, and I think the end might actually have been in Latin." Infrastructure inadequate Graham is considering flight paths over Sizewell and Dungeness. It's now PR twerp Siobhan's turn to be exasperated - by Kay's inability to record a vlog. And the week's good news story about the Olympic aquatic centre is also scuppered by the discovery of a mass grave. The performances remain sharp, as are the satirical digs slyly uttered in passing.

This pitch-perfect mockumentary starring Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes is proving unerringly close to the mark. In this third episode the Olympic Deliverance team learns that Roman remains have been found beneath the site of the aquatics centre forcing the team to make last-minute modifications to the building. Will it matter if athletes have to go through the canteen to get from the changing rooms to the pool?

Hugh Bonneville is in charge of Twenty Twelve, Sophie from Peep Show plays his secretary and Alan Partridge's Polish wife is on the organising team along with The Thick of It and Green Wing dependables.

As with People Like Us but not The Office, it's fairly gentle. There are frustrations and thwartings but no one is a monster.

It's not the last word in biting satire, possibly because the national mood re the Games is positive, but it's good to have the show out there, well before the first shot from a starter's pistol.

Actually, if not quite a monster, there is one member of the team who is monstrously idiotic and who will bring smirks of recognition to every journalist who's ever had dealings with a PR ninny (and that, by the way, is all hacks).

Jessica Hynes as Siobhan Sharpe says things like "Matthew Pinsent? I don't even know who he is" and "So this Hoy guy, the one with the huge legs yah?" and "She's terrific in the water but out of it she's got this big nose thing going on". You'd have to say Sharpe is positively Olympian in her berkishness.

It should be simple. A delegation from Rio de Janeiro is in town and the Olympic Deliverance Commission has to greet them at their Mayfair hotel then coach them out east to the London 2012 site for lunch with Sebastian Coe. Unfortunately, the driver is more familiar with Nottingham, and satire steers into farce as the coach plunges twice into the Blackwall Tunnel before bombing up the M11. As this ODC odyssey unfolds, team boss Ian (Hugh Bonneville) remains resolutely tactful and tactical, while a no-nonsense Portuguese interpreter (Karina Fernandez) translates Ian and co's diversionary flannel as she sees fit. Perhaps funniest of all is Head of Sustainability Kay Hope (superb Amelia Bullmore), who has to field irate calls from the school of her scissor-happy son: "He's a very imaginative boy. You are aware of that?" Kudos, too, to Coe, whose cameo lends the whole show credibility.

The second episode sees the Olympics Deliverance Committee on a hellish journey to meet Sebastian Coe at the Olympic stadium. After picking up delegates from Brazil's committee, the going gets slower and slower, allowing the team to deliver more of their trademark government-speak nonsense while Graham, Head Of Infrastructure, turns into a punishing backseat driver. It's a good mix of The Thick Of It and People Like Us, two shows this shares its DNA with.

As the Olympic clock tick tocks its way down to the big event, this new comedy couldn't be more timely. This six partner stars Jessica Hynes, Hugh Bonneville, Amelia Bullmore and Olivia Colman who form the team who have to troubleshoot their way to the opening ceremony. Some of the challenges they face may seem utterly unconnected to watching Sir Chris Hoy bombing round on his fancy BMX, but if there isn't enough wind to move the wind turbines or properly phased traffic lights, the whole event would be a disaster. Written by and directed by People Like Us writer John Morton, we expect it may not be as traumatic as the real Olympics in a year's time.

When London's countdown clock to the Olympics ­malfunctioned last week, it was an uncanny rerun of the first episode of this cruelly observed docu-spoof.

The second episode finds London's Olympic Deliverance committee stuck on a bus with a delegation from Brazil and things are still refusing to run like clockwork. They're heading for a meeting with Sebastian Coe at the Olympic Park - or then again, possibly not, thanks to the wonders of satnav and bus drivers with only the vaguest grasp of London geography.

Leading a brilliant cast is Hugh Bonneville as the ­ultra-calm Head Of ­Deliverance - a master at "managing expectations" and staying positive at all costs.

We're also loving Amelia Bullmore (Head of ­Sustainability), waffling ­meaninglessly about how "Sustainability is not legacy", as well as Jessica Hynes]s shinily robotic Head of Brand and Karl Theobald's panic-stricken Head of Infrastructure.

The narration by David Tennant is as warmly soothing as a foot rub and the job titles alone are enough to make you smile.

The only downside in this perfect comedy of cock-ups is the BBC has been accused of ripping off 1998 Australian ­mockumentary The Games, about inept officials ­planning for the Sydney Games.

The BBC strenuously denies it, but the producers of The Games claim to have had talks with the BBC's head of comedy about a British equivalent, and actually loaned the writer of this one a DVD of their own show. So has the Beeb been a very bad sport?