W1A is back, and its aim is as sharp as ever

The mockumentary's second season opens with an hour long special - but some of it hits a bit too close to home.

BBC's self-flagellating satire finally hits its stride

In its first series, W1A often felt like it was trying to do too much in 30 minutes, and breaking from the restrictive half-hour format allows the dynamics between characters to develop more organically, with longer set-pieces. As Ian himself would say, it's all good.

Ophelia Lovibond blog

Actress Ophelia Lovibond - hardworking PA Izzy - tells us what she loves about the comedy.

W1A premiere review

BBC's self-flagellating satire finally hits its stride.

W1A: series 2 returns roaring its timid BBC head

W1A roars back on to our screens with a laugh a minute. Okay, cool, yeah.

TV review: W1A

Why W1A reminds me of an embarrassing Geography teacher.

The spirit of W1A comes to the real BBC

It is a problem that would have Hugh Bonneville's bungling BBC executive Ian Fletcher reaching for his Blackberry: the real-life BBC has run out of paper.

TV preview: W1A, BBC2

Too many tossers on Top Gear? Not much of a surprise there. The first episode of the new series of W1A finds itself in a veritable art-imitating-life scenario when they have to do a damage limitation exercise on Jeremy Clarkson's latest fictional outburst, which involves trawling through old TG episode and counting up the times he has said "tosser".

W1A is back to lampoon the corporation and Clarkson

Brush up on your corporate gobbledegook as it's time to head back to New Broadcasting House in this hilariously accurate spoof of life at the BBC.

John Morton's affectionate satire of the inner workings of the BBC makes a welcome return. It has been accused of failing to go for the jugular, but that was never the intention. It's not about attacking the BBC, just as Twenty Twelve wasn't about attacking the Olympics.

According to Hugh Bonneville, it could just easily be about the NHS or Whitehall. "It's about satirising management structure and management speak," he says. W1A has two obvious and outstanding qualities. The first are the characters, all of whom are hideously recognisable and superbly performed.

Jessica Hynes steals the show as the grotesque PR supremo Siobhan Sharpe, but nobody in the ensemble cast puts a foot wrong. My personal favourite is Neil Reid's Controller of News & Current Affairs played by David Westhead, but there's a gem of a performance in tonight's hour-long episode from Andrew Brooke as the BBC's incompetent head of security.

It's other great quality is the dialogue, which sounds so natural that it feels improvised. Not so. "Every um and er - every odd word you hear - is there intentionally," says Bonneville. Because of this, the cast have to rehearse like an orchestra to get the rhythm right. "You spend your entire day running lines, running lines, running lines," says Bonneville.