Twenty Twelve

The very British skill of laughing at ourselves

Twenty Twelve is a gold medal standard British comedy featuring a hideously hilarious performance from Jessica Hynes.

Sadly but inevitably, and inevitably brilliantly, the finis to Twenty Twelve. (Did you realise they couldn't even call the series 2012 because of "copyright" impositions by the gun-toting corporate carbohydrated school-sports greedfest?) The big question is whether Ian and secretary Sally did or didn't. Go away on holiday together.

The clue came in his earlier meandered musings to her about what he might do after these seven years of Olympic and divorce hell. "Nothing exotic. Just... rent somewhere in Umbria. Maybe some little village up a hillside, get up late, breakfast in a shaded courtyard... wander down to the bar in the old square in the evening, sit outside with a book and cool bottle of Pinot Grigio kind of thing." Not a bad premise, Ian, and the look on Olivia Colman's stoic, lovely face, yearning to give an unasked "yes", was paintable.

Of course they went. And that's all good then. But somehow, please, a spin-off.

The real Twenty Twelve

Last night's flag blunder at Hampden Park was just the latest in a long line of embarrassing administrative errors at major sporting events...

The last episode of Twenty Twelve (and it pains me to even write those words) went out with a Sopranos finish, cutting to black at a critical moment as Ian worked himself up to say something of large significance to Sally. I still can't work out whether this was a cruel withholding of a consummation we've been longing for, or a wise decision to let us fill in the blank ourselves. But I can't hold it against the series, which has ridden the razor's edge between straight transcription and satirical exaggeration with near-perfect balance. Highlights this week included the discovery that the opening fireworks might trigger the army's ground-to-air missiles and last-minute glitches with a cultural commission involving mass bell ringing (that one was transcription surely). Lowlights next week include the fact that it isn't on any more and we have to swallow our Olympibollocks neat.

Twenty Twelve: One more thing left unfinished

The writers left us dangling on the edge of a conversation between Ian and Sally, a cruel trick for viewers, but a fitting metaphor for the team who, let's face it, haven't properly signed off on anything else.

Now here's the thing, this where we are with this: Twenty Twelve is over before we've even started. The gold medal send-up of London 2012's endless list of committee-led cock-ups - tickets, mascots, logos - signed off just in time for Friday's Olympics opening. It caught the mood of hoping for the best, fearing the worst and not quite believing we've actually got this far spot on. It's all good.

This witty, take-no-prisoners satire ends with Hugh Bonneville and his Deliverance team preparing to hand over to the Live team (God help them). But there's still room for last-minute initiatives - Aled Jones being roped into a bell-ringing event called The Big Bong, for example - and disasters. If the Opening Ceremony fireworks end up being virtual rather than actual, you'll know why.

The best sitcom of 2012 (and 2011) comes to an end tonight.

Yes, it's time to wave a teary farewell to Twenty Twelve ([y]BBC2[/y], 10pm).

Amid nonsensical PR-speak, the calamity-ridden organisation makes its final blunders. There are so many good things about this show.

Like Jessica Hynes as the wonderful Siobhan. Someone please give this woman her own spin-off.

There are fears that the fireworks at the Opening Ceremony will trigger ground-to-air missiles in London. Perhaps, wonders a member of the heroically dim Deliverance Committee, they could be incorporated into the display, even though the weapons "can't tell the difference between a Roman candle and a hijacked Airbus".

There are other problems: the Games' electric cars are under-powered, no one has thought to organise the national bell-ringing (called, with terrible, pin-brained inevitability, the Big Bong), and three of the team are fighting for the Director of Posterity job. But really, the last episode of this wonderfully silly comedy is all about the great unspoken love between Sally and Ian (Olivia Colman and Hugh Bonneville). Can they ever be together?

'Can we afford a last minute disaster or not?' wonders Hugh Bonneville's Ian Fletcher. The deliverance team manages to stumble over the finishing line tonight but, as ever, they're more Derek Redmond than Usain Bolt. Tonight's minor crises include a putative bell-ringing ceremony involving Aled Jones and a conceptual artist, and concerns about the fireworks at the opening ceremony triggering the ground-to-air missiles. Still, at least they haven't had to call in the army to provide security. The end hedges its bets slightly - surely this late in the day, writer John Morton must have been tempted to offer us some closure - but overall, this has been an exponentially multiplying delight and a triumph of English self-deprecation. Now to find out if the truth can be stranger than fiction...