John Morton

The BBC4 comedy makes the move to BBC2. There will come a time soon, after the cost is tallied and the results examined, when the 2012 London Olympics will be no laughing matter. Until then, it's fair game. Writer-director John Morton previously helmed the great People Like Us, and here the tone is similar and the standard just as high. Set in the Olympic Delivery Committee, complete with dreadful logo, we meet the excellent cast - Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Vincent Franklin - as they prepare to relaunch their website. A terrific start.

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.

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.

Twenty Twelve - 2012 BBC Sitcom Review

New to the illustrious BBC4 is the sitcom twenty twelve an Office style fake documentary satirically designed to laugh a long with the tricky business of hosting an Olympic games. The sitcom written and directed by "People like Us" mastermind John Morton managed to come under fire before even been released. This was due to the fact that the idea in itself is spookily similar to an Australian sitcom called the games which was based around getting ready for the Sydney Olympics and famously featured the 100 meter sprint track being 93 meters long.

There will come a time soon, after the cost is tallied and the results examined, when the 2012 London Olympics will be no laughing matter. Until then, it's fair game. Writer/director John Morton previously helmed the great People Like Us, and here the tone is similar and the standard just as high.

Set in the Olympics Deliveries Committee, complete with dreadful logo, we meet the excellent cast - Hugh Bonneville, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Vincent Franklin - as they prepare to relaunch their website.

A terrific start, mostly stolen by Hynes's spot-on PR agent.

John Morton, writer/director behind People like Us and Broken News, has a potential hit on his hands with this timely, engaging docuspoof. Narrated by David Tennant, it charts the bungling activities of the Olympic Deliverance Commission, a small team led by Ian Fletcher (redoubtable Hugh Bonneville), whose task is to smooth the run-up to 2012. On this week's agenda: nominating national heroes to be torchbearers (so that's, erm, Alan Sugar, Bruce Forsyth, Gok Wan...) and repurposing the tae kwon do stadium after the Games.

Every character in the ODC team shows promise, with Jessica Hynes amusingly maddening as PR bod Siobhan Sharp, whose assertiveness is exceeded only by her ineptitude ("Matthew Pinsent? I don't even know who that is"). She ends up babbling at the Tate Modern launch of her pet project - a hideous, green clock that mystifyingly counts backwards from 2012 to today. Seb and Boris, of course, get frequent name-checks and at least one of them will show up later in the series. It's a runner.

God, it's miserable, isn't it? Seriously. The world is a horrible, depressing mess. Even comedies make you want to cry. (Have you seen that last episode of Partridge?). So Twenty Twelve runs into a tvBite office wanting a laugh so badly, if we saw a pigeon at Wimbledon, we'd actually join in the hilarity. It's a good pedigree, written by John Morton, the maker of People Like Us, a brilliant show struck down by Glitteritis.

It suffers a tad by comparison to other office-based, hyper-real sitcoms, in that post-Office and Thick Of It, we've now seen workplace incompetence milked for just about every laugh. But that's about the only problem. The writing is sharp, the hook of the Olympics is a decent one and even if it wasn't any good, Jessica Hynes would drag it across the finish line anyway, turning in a show-stealing performance as a ditzy PR.

Twenty Twelve review: fun and Olympic games

Where the hell would we be without civil servants? Well, minus one very bankable topic for comedy it seems. The next group of tax-siphoners on the BBC's agenda are the people with the unenviable task of making sure the run-up to London 2012 is as smooth as possible. In real life these poor sods have been keeping their heads down since recruiting a rather untalented five-year old to design the Games' official logo, but with 500 days to go before it all kicks off, writer John Morton has shoved them back into the limelight once more.