Like the BBC, W1A series three is easier to admire than to love - episode one review

"How about a BBC News forecast app? Like the weather forecast but with emojis. Each day, it’ll be, like, Italy: smiley face. Syria: droopy mouth. Russia: angry face.” Unfold your Brompton bike because W1A (BBC Two) was back for a third series of self-reflexive BBC satire and management gobbledegook. 

In a critical year for the Corporation, the Charter Renewal Group – chaired by head of values Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville, sporting a sharp new haircut) – was launching the “More of less” initiative. Its mission: “To identify what the BBC does best and find more ways of doing less of it better”. 

As always, scenes were stolen by monstrous PR guru Siobhan Sharpe (Jessica Hynes), who airily declared that “nobody watches TV anymore – that’s not an overstatement, it’s an uber-statement”. She proposed turning the Beeb into a YouTube copycat called “BBC Me”.

It was all bitingly written, beautifully observed and brilliantly performed (oh, the things Sarah Parish and Monica Dolan can do with a brief pause or flickering facial expression). Broadcasting House was a place of frantic buck-passing and right-on red tape. A place where job titles included “director of better” and “head of strategic governance”. A place of pointless meetings on dog-shaped designer chairs beneath a Mary Berry mural. 

However, I found it easier to admire than to love. Writer-director John Morton’s script made you smirk at its cleverness, rather than chuckle aloud at its gags. Laugh-out-loud moments were rare amid all the spoof corporate-speak. I sometimes wondered how in-jokes about viral memes, skinny flat whites and silent discos would play outside the (incoming cliché) metropolitan liberal elite.

There was also a rather clumsy sub-plot about a cross-dressing pundit on Match of the Day. Instead, the highlights of this opening episode were the will-they-or-won’t-they romances. Intern Will (Hugh Skinner) and his boss Izzy (Ophelia Lovibond) have become a sort of “meedja” version of Tim and Dawn from The Office. Yeah, sure. No, cool. Say again? 

Meanwhile, the permanently exasperated Ian could never quite express his feelings for “head of inclusivity” Lucy (Nina Sosanya) – just Olivia Colman’s PA Sally couldn’t with him in W1A’s predecessor, London Olympics-organising mockumentary TwentyTwelve. When it uses its heart as well as head, W1A goes up a gear.