CHANNEL MANAGEMENT
HUGH BONNEVILLE AND SARAH PARISH ARE BACK WITH A NEW SERIES OF THE BBC MOCKUMENTARY. SO THAT’S ALL GOOD THEN…
The BBC is about to find itself at the centre of some major PR disasters – but fortunately this time they’re fictional.
Yes, satirical sitcom W1A is back this week, and we’ll be following the BBC’S senior management team with their trademark combination of indecision, inaction and meaningless buzzwords.
Inside TV was invited behind the scenes during filming at the BBC’S New Broadcasting House in central London, where we chatted to some of the cast about the third series – and what it’s like to be filming while real BBC employees are trying to get on with their work…
“Actually I think the joke has worn off for everyone who works here!” chuckles Hugh Bonneville, who plays Head of Values Ian Fletcher. “For the first two series, they were very indulgent and accommodating – but now they’re just cross.”
The new series sees the senior managers attempting to implement the corporation’s new ‘More Of Less’ initiative, where they must establish what the BBC does best and identify better ways of doing less of it more. And while trying to get their heads around that, they have more immediate problems to address, like a crisis at Match
Of The Day in episode one… “Ryan Chelford was a Premier League footballer and he’s very keen to be a pundit on Match Of The Day,” explains Hugh. “He’s sort of the Eddie Izzard of football, in so far as he enjoys cross- dressing, and when the team at Match Of The Day decide he’s not right for presenting, he and the BBC gurus assume it’s out of some awkward desire not to cause offence. In fact, it’s because he’s a really rubbish pundit. So we bend over backwards trying to justify the reason that he’s not going to be on the show…”
Meanwhile, Director of
Better Anna Rampton is trying to say and do as little as possible to ensure that she never actually has to give an opinion on anything – but according to Sarah Parish, who plays her, she might not be able to keep it up forever…
“This series is quite tricky for Anna,” reveals Sarah. “She’s put in a position a couple of times where she has to make some tough choices which she can’t make! So she gets somebody else to do it.
“But it’s been so interesting – her character has some really good development this year,” continues the star. “She is quite austere, but underneath it all, I think that she’s very nervous and very phobic, and everything is a nightmare for her. So her way of getting
THERE ISN’T REALLY A ROMANCE, IT’S ALL IN HER HEAD” SARAH
through life is to either be silent, or to be very hard and definite about what she says.”
It became apparent in the second run that Anna is attracted to Ian and would like to take their relationship further, and this series she’s trying to make that happen – without much success.
“There isn’t really a romance, it’s all in her head,” confirms Sarah. “In typical Anna fashion, she’s a 48-year-old woman, but she has the innards of a 14-year-old girl. She thinks there’s something there, but there isn’t really –
I’m sure Ian is terrified of her!”