W1A

W1A is back to lampoon the corporation and Clarkson

Brush up on your corporate gobbledegook as it's time to head back to New Broadcasting House in this hilariously accurate spoof of life at the BBC.

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.

Ophelia Lovibond interview

Ophelia Lovibond, who counts Caroline Flack and Jack Whitehall among her friends, said she also hopes to achieve success on stage: "Oh my God, I would love to go on stage so much. I'm undignified with how badly I want it."

W1A series 2 preview

Often overlooked, is David Tennant's narration which for me, holds the show together and often most of the laughs are as a result of his descriptions, for example "It's another day, at another time" or "After a year developing a drama, the project is finally nearing another meeting".

W1A: BBC staff admit show is close enough to real thing

The BBC newsroom now use Siobhan Sharpe's phrase 'Let's nail this puppy to the floor!' in a true case of life imitating art.

TV review: W1A Series Two, BBC Two

Hugh Bonneville stars in scarily plausible BBC mockumentary.

W1A review: Clarkson's ghost looms large

At the preview screening, the producer Jon Plowman said he would like the show to run until the charter renewal in 2016. On this evidence - and at the rate the BBC is churning out scandals and gaffes - it could run a lot longer than that.

Wimbledon 'too white'... in W1A world

Heard the latest? The BBC's Wimbledon coverage is 'too white' and the broadcaster's exclusive rights to the tournament are at risk. Luckily, the BBC has a rescue plan. It's fixed on French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as its Wimbledon saviour and is considering pepping up programming with foam fingers in the stands, David Attenborough in the umpire's chair and Graham Norton in the players' box. But hold your fury, tennis fans; this is all happening in the parallel world of W1A - BBC Two's sitcom set in the Corporation's London headquarters that will begin its second series next week.

W1A, review

At the preview screening, the producer Jon Plowman said he would like the show to run until the charter renewal in 2016. On this evidence - and at the rate the BBC is churning out scandals and gaffes - it could run a lot longer than that.

Jeremy Clarkson featured in new series of W1A

The second series of BBC mockumentary W1A has hit the televisual nail on the head once again with its opening episode featuring a controversial incident involving Jeremy Clarkson and the word "tosser".