Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A special – “W1A Does Red Nose Day 2017” (2017)

W1A did a couple short specials after the series ended—while I was looking to see if they were available online, I came across this one from between seasons 2 and 3. And to my surprise, it’s one with Joel Fry in it! It’s only about four minutes long, but it’s amusing.

Ahead of Red Nose Day, Comic Relief has asked the BBC for help with branding and promotion for the charity event. Siobhan is on the case, which, as usual, might not be the best idea.

Eh—it’s short, it’s cute. When Ian is telling Siobhan about Comic Relief’s request, he explains, “Apparently, the big thing is that this year, it will actually be funny.” There’s a bit with Lenny Henry, who co-founded the organization, and Siobhan has some terrible marketing ideas. The worst is a plain ratty T-shirt to “[put] the ‘Tee’ back in ‘pover-tee.’” Oh, Siobhan! :shakes head:

Not a whole lot for David Tennant to do in such a short piece, and what little narration he has is more functional than funny. But I do like this lead-in to the Lenny Henry scene: “With the big day fast approaching, it seems like the right moment to fly the big thoughts up the flagpole and share them with a very special guest.”

Joel Fry comes in when Siobhan’s team pitches ideas for comedic things people can do to raise donations. Karl’s “secret selfie” idea is predictably nonsensical, and it’s kind of sweet to see him on pins and needles waiting to hear what Siobhan thinks of it. Meanwhile Barney’s idea is to switch clothes with someone else, explaining, “So maybe you wear, like, your mother’s clothes.” Not missing a beat, Karl agrees, “Yeah, finally.” Hee!

 

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 2, Episode 4 (2015)

*Spoilers from episode 3*

Series 2 finale. The third and final season is a bit longer, but it also has more episodes with Joel Fry, so woohoo for that! As a season ender, this episode leans quite a bit into the awkward humor, which can make it hard to take at times. However, I think they pull it around in the end.

First, a couple updates from the last episode. Ian and Lucy have had an understated will-they-won’t-they thing going on since the start of the series, and they’re seeing even more of each other now that Lucy has been promoted to the newly-created Director of Inclusivity. But things have suddenly gotten more complicated—in episode 3, Anna was panicking before her speech at the BBC Better launch, and when Ian went in to help calm her down, she wound up kissing him.

Okay, onto the finale! Ian is due to make a speech about the BBC’s commitment to inclusivity, so he’s invited Lucy to join his weekly “Way Ahead” meeting. This puts her in the awkward position of trying to talk a bunch of white execs through the BBC’s current inclusivity numbers and setting target goals. Making things even more uncomfortable is Anna. Since they kissed at the BBC Better launch, she’s been talking to Ian in the same brusquely indifferent tone as usual, but she always wants to be around him. Will has been a bit at loose ends since Izzy got moved to a position in development, and he wishes he had a reason to spend more time with her.

Our character of the week is Jack Patterson, played by Jonathan Bailey! Previously, he was Anna’s PA, but since her elevation to Director of Better, she got him a place in development as well. While I know Will has a crush on Izzy, I’m not sure about Jack, but I think he does too. Things could be tense/awkward between these three when they were all working in the PA area together, and that only ramped up after Will’s internship ended. With both Jack and Izzy now in development, I get the feeling that Jack thinks the “proper” balance has been restored, but Will might have something to say about that. 

Poor Lucy in this episode, oof. She’s surrounded by white people who are quick to tout how much they absolutely agree with her about making the BBC look more like the British population but are both clueless and indecisive about taking steps to actually get there. Even getting them through the first, smallest baby step is like herding racially insensitive cats. One exec keeps saying she wants him to fire staff, while Siobhan insists that the answer to all their problems is simply to “viralize” a young South Asian weather forecaster with a beard, exclaiming, “I mean, he’s so BAME, it’s practically coming out of his ears.” (BAME is like the British version of BIPOC.) Later in the episode, Ian’s big speech is heavy on emphasis and light on substance: “Also, we’re going to commit—and we’re absolutely committed to this—we’re going to commit to exceeding those [inclusivity] targets by a minimum of 10% across the board, as soon as we know what they are.”

When it comes to work, Anna’s role as Director of Better still mostly just amounts to her saying, “The fact is, this is about being better,” in meetings. And on a more personal level, she’s no friendlier or more demonstrative to Ian than she was before they kissed, but she’s always there, especially when Ian and Lucy are together. She invites herself along to Ian’s speech (because she strongly feels Better should be represented) and hires a car for the two of them, even though Ian’s told her he invited Lucy to come as well. It’s a tangled web that I imagine will need to get unpacked in series 3.

Here are a few good bits from David Tennant’s narration in the finale:

• More Syncopatico jokes – “The BBC has recently introduced a fully-integrated, cloud-based room booking system in its public commitment to make the technology in Broadcasting House more intelligent than the people who work there.”
• This pretty well sums up the centrist/blandly liberal “commitment” to inclusion (also, if you were wondering what BAME meant, here it is!) – “The world of inclusivity is a world full of acronyms, and both BAME, which stands for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnics, and LGBT, which stands for something else altogether, are almost perfect examples of how they can work.”

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 2, Episode 3 (2015)

*Episode premise spoilers*

It’s interesting—Twenty Twelve paints Ian as a well-meaning but largely ineffectual man trying to steer a massive ship. Faced with some crises, he just kind of dithers. At other times, he’s doing his best but hamstrung by idiots or unable to corral people pulling things in different directions for their own self-serving purposes. On the occasions when he does get a win, it’s often by the skin of his teeth. But on W1A, he’s gradually emerging as both a savvy and considerate leader. While this is partly just in comparison to some of the useless execs he’s surrounded by, it’s not only that.

Anna has been officially named Director of Better, head of the new BBC Better initiative. Pretty much everyone—Anna included—still doesn’t know what that actually means. But Siobhan is going full steam ahead on a lavish launch party anyway. Meanwhile, thanks to Will’s habit of attracting technical glitches, Ian gets a sneak peek at Simon’s planned restructuring of the BBC’s executives.

At this point, everyone is sort of playing chicken with the whole BBC Better thing, or maybe it’s an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. Nobody knows what it is, but nobody wants to admit they don’t know, so they all just kind of pretend to know what they’re talking about. This is trickiest for Anna, who’s supposed to be giving a speech at the launch. Since she’s vaguely aware that Better will have some oversight on the other departments, she resorts to asking other execs to type up “a few thoughts” and send them to her.

Our character of the week is entertainment format producer David Wilkes, played by Rufus Jones. He’s Lucy’s colleague with the trite, half-formed reality show ideas, and a regular dynamic between them is for him to casually compliment her hair/outfit/etc. while she waits to hear what he actually wants from her. She’s been his cleanup batter since the start of the series, taking his mess and making some sense of it, and now he’s failing upward on the strength of the help she’s given him. When it comes to race, Twenty Twelve doesn’t get much more advanced than “these white people don’t know what they’re talking about, but they’re desperate to prove they’re not racist,” but W1A is doing a decent job of quietly showing how Lucy is treated like an underappreciated workhorse at the BBC. She struggles to get her own projects off the ground but is always expected to come in and save other people’s.

Like I said, Ian has been kind of coming into his own on this show. Ever since the series 1 finale, when he figured out the magic formula to make things happen, he’s been doing pretty well for himself. More than once, we’ve seen him finagle his way around the managerial mud pit. Simon has taken to passive-aggressively calling him “Captain Values,” and when Ian gets a look at Simon’s restructuring, he’s able to get the jump on him. Additionally, Ian’s own title as Head of Values is sort of nebulous too, but he does take it seriously. His values are displayed in how he cares about others. Although, like the others, he can get caught up in jockeying for position, those concerns often fall away when someone really needs help. When that happens, he prioritizes just being there for them.

Here are my favorite David Tennant narration lines from this episode:

• Nice euphemism for Will accidentally swapping his schedule with Ian’s on their respective tablets – “In his new official capacity as assistant to the Head of Values, Will is already making a big difference to Ian’s working life.”
• More Syncopatico jokes, whose convenient “you can print from anywhere in the building!” is less convenient when it doesn’t tell you which printer it sent your document to – “Ian is one of the many people in New Broadcasting House who’ve been brought closer together by the BBC’s cutting-edge new Syncopatiprint technology.”
• Classic Twenty Twelve/W1A phrasing – “By 6:00, it’s time for the 6:00 news.”