Target practice

Ever since the days of Tony Hancock, many of the best British sitcoms — from Dad’s Army to Fawlty Towers, Rising Damp to The Royle Family — have featured a middle-aged man convinced that he’s the only sane person left in an increasingly mad world. The frankly subversive twist in W1A (BBC2, Thursday) is that the middle-aged man in question might well be right. As the BBC’s Head of Values, Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is surrounded by any number of jargon-spouting younger colleagues whose apparent aim is not to let anybody realise how stupid they are — or at least it would be if they realised it themselves.

Head of Output Anna Rampton, for example, obviously believes that making statements like ‘We do it well, but we could do it better than well’ will help her chances of being appointed to the new BBC post of Director of Better. Her rival Matt Taverner, the Generic Head of Drama and/or Comedy, doesn’t actually read the scripts he’s discussing, but knows he can always fall back on wondering if they should be more multicultural. Brand consultant Siobhan Sharpe develops ideas — or if you prefer, talks nonsense — with her team of trending analysts, viral concept designers and ideation architects, before pontificating with utter certainty about what the corporation should be doing, despite not knowing who David Dimbleby is, or what the letters BBC stand for.

Ian, meanwhile, also has to battle a dysfunctional computer system with the brilliant name of Incompatico — as well as New Broadcasting House itself, with its think-pods, hot-desking and large wall-mounted mottoes in which platitudes pose as aphorisms. (I only hope that the building’s designers are watching as their ideas are revealed not merely as unfit for purpose, but as comedy gold.