Hugh Bonneville

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.

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?

There were some a nice moments, like the countdown clock that ran backwards from 2012 to the present day. The joke was particularly piquant because the following day in what we still touchingly call "real life", the actual 2012 countdown clock broke down.

But aside from Hugh Bonneville as the ODC's stressed boss and Jessica Hynes as an aggressively dim PR, the characters were not precisely enough drawn, relying instead on types and tropes from The Office. Even so, it was worth it for the running joke of suitable candidates to be the national torchbearer. The winner was Gok Wan.

Stick the fantastically funny spoof documentary Twenty Twelve on BBC1 or BBC2 and we'd have a guaranteed smash hit on our hands. So what do they do? Relegate it to the ratings wasteland of BBC4. ­

Starring dazzling duo Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes, this ­hilarious Olympic farce is must-see TV.

Twenty Twelve is a timely satire following the travails of the fictional team behind the 2012 London Olympics. The mockumentary has been chronically overused of late, but Twenty Twelve can be forgiven, firstly because it works so well and secondly because writer/creator/ director John Morton pioneered the format with the brilliant People Like Us.

The show charts the many catastrophes, both large and small, that already beset the Olympic project long, long before any spike disturbs the asphalt or a javelin is hurled in anger.

Finding a sustainable use for a Tae Kwon Do stadium, sorting out traffic congestion, dealing with obstinate artists, channeling Boris Johnson's enthusiasm and launching a faltering countdown clock are amongst the challenges of episode one. In a delicious case of life imitating art, the actual 2012 countdown clock broke down on the day of its unveiling, shortly after the satire was broadcast.

Hugh Bonneville provides star power as project leader Ian, but every scene is shamelessly stolen by Jessica Hynes as ignorant, neurotic, gibberish-spouting public relations guru Siobhan. David Tennant, meanwhile, provides the straight-faced narration.

Hugh Bonneville on laughing at London 2012

A new BBC Four sitcom featuring the Downton Abbey star takes the mickey out of the Olympics - and even features Lord Coe. Only in Britain, says Benji Wilson.

Deliciously skewering everyone from marketing creatives and PRs to web designers, John Morton's mockumentary (narrated by David Tennant) about the "Olympic Deliverance" team preparing for 2012 appears both painful and probable. It is the characterisation that is so sharp and knowing, while the execution is all the better for its subtlety.

Heading the team is the exasperated Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville), who frequently despairs in his hapless staff. Aside from the bluff Nick Jowett (Vincent Franklin), who is prone to uttering, "I don't care who you are. I'm sorry, I'm from Yorkshire and I'm not having it", Fletcher is painted as the only one with a glimmer of competence. An early crisis is that the 2012 countdown clock has been designed by a curmudgeonly British artist, who refuses to explain how it works, or admit that it is flawed. It was commissioned by Head of Brand, Siobhan Sharpe (Jessica Hynes), a firm believer in "adspeak", who is often framed as clueless. Her suggestions for national heroes to be Olympic torch-bearers include Bruce Forsyth and Gok Wan, and she confuses the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy with the Welsh singer Duffy. Meanwhile, her colleague Kay Hope (Amelia Bullmore), Head of Sustainability, wonders if the taekwondo hall might make a good donkey sanctuary once the Games themselves are finished.