David Westhead

W1A: Initial Lockdown Meeting review

"Every problem is a solution waiting to happen," Hugh Bonneville says as he reprises his role as the BBC's head of values, Ian Fletcher. And right now he tells four other characters from the satirical sitcom W1A in a mock-Zoom meeting to determine the corporation's lockdown strategy. "We are looking at one of the biggest solutions any of us have ever seen."

W1A News boss Neil Reid on his worst decision ever

W1A's Controller of News and Current Affairs, Neil Reid, has revealed his worst decision ever made.

The TV character, played by actor David Westhead, joined presenter Simon McCoy on the BBC News Channel to mark its 20th anniversary

W1A, episode 3 review

Three series in, this one-time funny sitcom is just irritating.

It was a genuine delight to hear, once more, the strains of the Animal Magic theme as W1A returned for a third series. One of the joys of watch-again is that, in addition to the more garish tropes to which we're now used - the folding bikes, Monica Dolan's perpetual Welsh whining, Jessica Hynes's PR gorgon - one can find, in almost every 30 seconds, unlooked-for subtleties. David Westhead as Neil Reid, the one-man Greek chorus whose muttered "bollocks" says, in sadly splendid isolation, what we're all thinking, and the more hidden verbal tics from deadpan narrator David Tennant: "the department for culture, media and also for some reason sport"... "assistant of some sort Will Humphries".

Incidentally, did you notice Dolan in Strike, playing the wrongly jailed wife? True skills, to turn from blistering darkness to high comedy over two nights. W1A continues to draw flak, roundly undeserved: too BBC-smug, too London, too hugging of itself, too versed in PR knowingness, too not-Brexit. I revere it as a brave commission, and a gleeful and celebratory use of most of the best comedy actors and improvisers of the last decade, surely a golden age, and long may it continue: at least until a massive backdrop of caustic creator John Morton appears on one of the walls, at which point the BBC can officially be proved to have eaten itself.

W1A: Why this final series might be the best yet.

I'm just a little upset that this is the final series as, from what I've seen, W1A is arguably the BBC funniest comedy that's currently on screen and I'm just wondering if the reason its leaving the screens is because of Morton's ability to spoof the company that's actually in charge of recommissioning his brilliant sitcom.

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.