Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 1, Episode 4 (2014)

*Spoilers from episode 3, as well as the end of Twenty Twelve*

Okay, you know what? The series 1 finale is actually pretty good. Stuff happens! Some good narration from David Tennant too. Might be a low bar, but I enjoyed it. And while I think it makes a difference that we get more direct ties to Twenty Twelve here, that’s only part of it.

The newspaper article about Ian is more than just harping on his (apparently exorbitant) salary. It also details allegations that he misused funds when he was on the Olympic Deliverance Commission, and the whole thing is turning into both a professional and personal shitstorm. Lucy is languishing on Britain’s Tastiest Village, which has become a bit of mess, when she really wants to be working on the comedy-drama script she pitched alongside the show’s writer in episode 3. Siobhan brings Barney to the BBC to present their ideas for the logo rebrand.

When Ian’s time with the commission was nearing its end, he’d mentioned to Sally that he was interested in taking a holiday in Italy when it was all over. Sally being Sally, she went above and beyond, planning the whole trip for him—that’s where the allegations came from, because she all did this while she was on the clock. What’s more, at the last minute, Ian invited Sally to come with him to Italy. Now the whole story is being dragged through the press, including pictures of Sally, and reporters are waiting outside the BBC for Ian every morning.

Ian responds to this with some of his usual fecklessness. His attempt to send Sally an apology bouquet backfires in a big way, and there’s an entertaining scene where Ian has to sit listening to all the higher ups spitball figures on reasonable reductions to his salary. But at the same time, this experience helps Ian discover a bit of backbone and ingenuity. We see him taking some much-needed proactive steps here, on behalf of himself and another character.

Our character of the week is Simon Harwood, played by Jason Watkins. Simon is the BBC’s Director of Strategic Governance—he’s who most characters in the show report to on a day-to-day basis, although there’s a Big Boss who gets namedropped. His main quirks are 1) passing duties onto someone else and 2) enthusiastically agreeing with the person who last spoke, regardless of how much they contradict the previous person he agreed with.

It’s clear that Britain’s Tastiest Village has all but collapsed due to its various complications, yet it’s still limping along. If Lucy’s heart was ever in it, she’s completely over it now. And Siobhan and Barry’s presentation is amusing. They manage to accidentally reinvent the Star of David, so Siobhan evidently doesn’t know any more about religions than she did on Twenty Twelve.

After being a little down on David Tennant’s narration in the first three episodes, this is honestly a good episode for him. He’s got some funny lines in the season finale! Here are my favorites:

• When Ian gets to the BBC in the morning, a gaggle of reporters are waiting outside for him – “He’s already late for work, but he’s about to discover he’s not as late yet as he’s eventually going to be.”
• There’s a minor subplot about concerns over the wardrobe of a female news commentator “who’s been accused of wearing clothes that are inappropriately watchable” – good line!
• This sums up the state of affairs with Britain’s Tastiest Village – “Despite Lucy’s concerns about the basic premise of the show itself, the question of who’s going to present it is much more important than that.”
• This line cracked me up – “Elaine Pearson walks Ian through some of the advantages of cutting his current salary (which we are unable to reveal here for ethical reasons) to a level comparable with someone who earns a lot less than that.”

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: Twenty Twelve: Series 2, Episode 7 – “Loose Ends” (2012)

*Spoilers for episode 6*

The finale of Twenty Twelve doesn’t have much to offer in the way of Joel Fry/Karl, but luckily, we’re not quite through with the character yet. More on that in a bit!

Things are getting down to the wire for the commission. The start of the Games are rapidly approaching, and Ian is eager to take care of all the last-minute details before he hands the reins to the team that will be running the actual Games. Amid that mad scramble, the shortlist for the post-Games director of posterity position is released, which several members of the commission have applied for.

At the eleventh hour, things for the commission are as disaster-prone as ever. The fireworks at the opening ceremony are in danger of triggering Britain’s automatic ground-to-air defense missiles—so, you know, not good! Kay installed slow-charge stations for the fleet of electric cars to ferry athletes around the Olympic Park, but based on the 10-hour charging time, they’re projected to have zero cars available by day two. And Siobhan is auditioning composers for a piece to be played on church bells on the morning the Games start, and let’s just say she’s not finding the cream of the crop.

Some nice David Tennant narration today. Here are my favorite lines of his from the finale:

• Fun bit, in reference to the whole fireworks debacle – “In the last few weeks, a growing conflict of interest between the creative team behind the opening ceremony and the Ministry of Defense has become potentially explosive.”
• “Meanwhile, it’s a different day altogether, and just six days to go until handover” – hee!
• Love this line – “Despite how high the stakes are, Ian knows he has no option now but to keep thinking on his feet until he finds out where it is they’ve taken him.”

For some reason, Siobhan also needs a celebrity for this church bell thing. She’s promised someone on the level of Paul McCartney or Sting, and when she finds out Sting is in Tuscany and doesn’t want to come back for the Olympics, she shouts into her phone, “He can bring his fucking lute! You know, get over it!”

So, since her overly ambitious pitches aren’t available, it’s up to her team to track down a smaller-scale celebrity. This is perhaps the natural progression of the dynamic Siobhan and her team have with Karl, because Karl doesn’t even take part in this meeting despite being in the same room. While Barney and Coco fill Siobhan in on how their respective celebrity hunts went, Karl is sitting in the background, wearing headphones and looking at something on his tablet. It’s not clear if he realizes there’s a meeting going on behind him.

Which is fine with everybody else., Siobhan asks about him as an afterthought once she’s heard from Coco and Barney, but she balks at Coco’s offer to get his attention. “No, no, no, no, no, leave him,” Siobhan insists, adding, “Yeah, that’s like, don’t wanna know,” if he was able to secure his celebrity (who I’ve never heard of but who is evidently an embarrassing choice.)

As such, Joel Fry’s time on Twenty Twelve ends with a bit of a whimper, but it’s not the last we’ve seen of Karl! He also appears on a handful of episodes of the spinoff W1A. I don’t know much about that show. I just know it features some of the Twenty Twelve characters, including Ian and Siobhan (which makes sense, given Karl’s presence,) as well as some new ones, including a character played by Jonathan Bailey. And of course, W1A will also feature narration from David Tennant, so we’ll continue with the Other Doctor Lives posts too!

Still, we’ll wrap up Twenty Twelve, and there will be a bit of a break before moving on to the spin-off. I just found out Joel Fry’s new series Alice and Steve is coming out at the start of June, and I don’t want to drop those reviews into the middle of W1A, so until I’ve finished that show, I’ll pivot to something different for both Joel Fry-days and Other Doctor Lives.

Final thoughts on Twenty Twelve:

Accent Watch

David Tennant – Scottish.

Joel Fry – Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – A soft maybe. It’s entertaining, but it’s not a knockout.

David Tennant – I don’t know if I would. While Tennant always gets the job done, I’m not sure if it’s worth it just for his narration.

Joel Fry – Yes! I don’t care that he’s only in one-to-two scenes for each of his episodes. Karl is wonderful!

Warnings

Language, smoking, and mild thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: Twenty Twelve: Series 2, Episode 6 – “Inclusivity Day” (2012)

*Spoilers from the end of episode 5*

We’re at the penultimate episode of the series and things are ramping up, albeit in a very bureaucratic British way. Matters are coming to a head on several fronts.

So in the last episode, during a security review involving the doctored starter pistols, Ian accidentally got shot in the foot (literally.) Now it’s 24 days until the Olympics, he’s stuck in the hospital, and his boss just poached his PA. Back at the office, the rest of the commission plans for the rapidly-approaching Inclusivity Day while Siobhan’s team partners with a professional footballer to address the lack of interest in women’s football.

One of Ian’s character quirks has been to describe a dismal state of affairs and top it off with, “No, so basically it’s all good,” and we get a lot of that from him here at the hospital. As he struggles to get things done, everyone from the commission who stops by to visit him is mainly there for their own self-interests. I like where the episode takes this storyline, though.

Part of the problem with Inclusivity Day is that the Olympics is also hosting Diversity Day at the same time, so 1) the commission isn’t clear on what the difference is between the two, and 2) some of their ideas for special guests are already occupied appearing at Diversity Day. On top of that, there are arguments over who’s running the morning meeting when Ian isn’t there and Kay’s clashing with Fi is worse than ever. I laughed out loud at this line, from Nick: “If we get this wrong as well, we’re in danger of running out of feet to shoot ourselves in.”

Here’s what we’ve got for David Tennant’s narration today:

• The wording of this cracked me up – “Back over at Perfect Curve, Siobhan Sharpe and her team are about to get creative with the idea of Carey Taylor.”
• I loved this description, when Kay meets with someone on site to discuss the plan for Inclusivity Day – “...And in the spirit of inclusivity, head of legacy Fi Healey has decided to join her, in case anything happens.”

Our character of the week is Coco Lomax, Siobhan’s trend analyst. Played by Sara Pascoe, she’s the last member of Siobhan’s team. While Barney remains at the top of my shitlist, I’m not thrilled with Coco, either. She’s not openly/relentlessly critical of Karl, but she takes part in the whole office’s pattern of excluding him.

In addressing the problem with women’s football, which is opening the Games but has hardly sold any tickets, Ian isn’t confident in Siobhan’s ability to fix it. “For all I know, they’re trying to rebrand it as men’s basketball,” he gripes. “I wouldn’t put it past them.” And to be sure, Siobhan and her team aren’t exactly on top of it. The more they talk, the clearer it is that footballer Carey Taylor is thoroughly unimpressed with their “brilliant” marketing idea.

Thankfully, Barney doesn’t pick apart Karl’s ideas in this episode, but he’s still not having a good time. The theme of Karl’s presence in this episode is very definitely exclusion, and we see that throughout. There’s a whole thing with everyone in the office loving Brazillos—Siobhan tosses one for Barney to catch in his mouth, and after everyone claps for him, he high-fives just Siobhan and Coco. Then when Karl asks for a Brazillo, he leans back and opens his mouth, ready to catch, but Siobhan just pushes the bowl over to him. Even when everyone is meeting Carey, he tries for a high-five and ends up with a handshake. His input is met with silent stares from everybody.

And listen, I’m not saying that Karl is a fantastic PR person who’s being unfairly maligned by his colleagues. I’m saying he’s awkward, anxious, and doesn’t really thrive in the fast-paced atmosphere of a pitch session, but he still doesn’t deserve the way his colleagues treat him. He regularly miscalculates things, jumping in at the wrong time or saying the wrong thing. The women’s football campaign is called “Who’s That Girl?”, and as Coco is explaining the pitch to Carey, Barney chimes in with a singsong,” Who’s that girl?” to punctuate each beat. But when Karl tries to join in, he winds up singsonging, “What are those lips?” to everyone’s bewilderment. (It makes sense in context but is still ridiculous—I laughed so hard.) And I love this moment where Coco assures Carey, “You’re Wayne Rooney, only it’s like, you’re a woman,” and Karl leans in to clarify, “She doesn’t mean that like literally.” Oh, honey!

Joel Fry is great in this role. Even though he’s only in one or two scenes per episode and Karl is a bit of a one-joke character, he’s still both funny and endearing. Justice for Karl!