Twenty Twelve

Behind the scenes on Twenty Twelve

Gerard Gilbert is granted an exclusive guided tour behind the scenes of the award-winning comedy Twenty Twelve - and discovers how sometimes life imitates art more closely than you imagine...

Twenty Twelve's Morven Christie to avoid real Olympics

Morven Christie might have been playing it for laughs in Twenty Twelve, the BBC's spoof documentary about the shambolic Olympics organising committee, but she has no interest in the real Games.

Amelia Bullmore interview

The Twenty Twelve and Scott & Bailey star reveals why she is so rarely recognised in the street.

If the hoopla surrounding the London 2012 Olympics is beginning to grate, the perfect antidote is nestled in the BBC schedules. Twenty Twelve is a subtly-rendered comedy which pokes the mildest of fun at the London 2012 circus.

Starring Hugh Bonneville, the series follows the team responsible for delivering the Olympics, and includes some great turns from the cream of British comedy acting, including Spaced's Jessica Hynes' genius performance as a vacant PR girl and Peep Show's Olivia Coleman as Bonneville's intent and slightly creepy PA.

Despite the satirical edge, the characters on show make the whole thing seem unfeasibly realistic. This week, a pledge to merge the Olympics with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee resulted in the Frankenstein construction of the Jubilympics. The heinous idea, from Hynes' team of PR try-hards, received a reluctant thumbs-up from hapless Bonneville, constantly buffeted from pillar to post feeling the need to play "yes man", who travelled all the way to Clarence House, where it was duly vetoed. In the vein of satire hit The Thick Of It, it's perhaps more gentle without a foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker character, but nonetheless entertaining as it lurches towards what can only be its staggeringly inept finale.

In case you hadn't noticed, we've dipped under 100 days to go to the Olympics - so here's hoping this thoroughly amusing satire set in the office of the Olympics Deliverance Team isn't too close to the truth. Once again Jessica Hynes's horrifyingly stupid PR woman Siobhan Sharpe steals the show: in this final episode her efforts to look cool in front of a rapper has echoes of Ab Fab's Eddie, but the highlight is when she's flummoxed by guest star Vicki Pepperdine (Getting On), who turns about to be a hilariously forthright adviser for Sharpe's Olympics village sexual health campaign.

The actual preparations for London's Olympics have handed this mockumentary some lovely moments of comedy gold on a silver platter.

Take Anish Kapoor's massive steel sculpture in the Olympic Park - the ArcelorMittal Orbit, which more than lives up to the clumsiness of its name.

The defining design feature of the Orbit is that, no matter which direction you view it from, it is still quite breathtakingly ugly.

No comedy writer would have dared dream up a monstrosity like this.

And yet it actually exists as a permanent feature on the London skyline, like a roller coaster that got put in the tumble-drier by mistake.

In the last episode of this all-too-brief series, (we've been promised some more episodes before the Games commence) the Deliverance Committee somehow find themselves committed to wrapping the Orbit in a giant condom to spread the safe sex message.

This has the unfortunate effect of turning the Olympics into "a global sexual event" and manages to offend many of the visiting nations at a stroke. And just to ram the message home, a rapper called Mini Stepper (no relation to Tinchy Stryder) has been hired to star in the raunchy commercial.

It's yet another PR brainwave from Siobhan Sharpe. But even she can't hold a candle this week to Head Of Infrastructure Graham Hitchins (the often overlooked Karl Theobald) who has to devise a relay route to ensure the Olympic torch comes within five miles of 95% of the population.

The map he's come up with looks suspiciously like a preliminary sketch for the Orbit tower...

The route for the Olympic torch relay is in chaos because the deliverance team has pledged the impossible and the nonsensical, that the torch "will be within the reach of 95 per cent of the population". The solution? Alter the geography of Britain, at least theoretically, so now, announces infrastructure head Graham Hitchins, pointing to a map: "I've moved Nottingham a lot closer to Sheffield."

The clueless pinheads at PR company Perfect Curve, meanwhile, have dreamed up a rap song to accompany a planned Olympics sexual health campaign, which results in an excruciating meeting between resolutely non-hip deliverance boss Ian and a rapper. It's a great final episode, a zinger at the end of a too-brief series. Can we have an Olympic Games special in the summer, please?

Have you been watching ... Twenty Twelve?

BBC2's joyous Olympic mockumentary starring Hugh Bonneville and Jessica Hynes has proved a Friday night comedy treat.

The pick of the bunch - for one final week - remains John Morton's iron fist inside a velvet glove; pulverising management gibberish and lampooning jargon-spouting 'creatives' everywhere, for the viewing pleasure of those of us on Planet Normal. This week, following a cheeky jibe about 'difficulty raising funds for a proposed high-tech curtain wrap' for the Olympic Stadium (what could they possibly be referring to?), attention instead turns to the sponsors for the wrap around Anish Kapoor's Orbit Tower: a US condom firm. Can the Olympics be rebranded as 'a global sexual event'? Tremendous performances and pin-point satire (only a pained hip hop parody misses the target) ensure another splendidly entertaining half-hour of comedy.

BBC America to screen Twenty Twelve

BBC America has announced that it will air BBC Two mockumentary series Twenty Twelve ahead of the London 2012 Olympics.