W1A - Season 2
Season 2
Episodes
Episode 1
One year on and head of values Ian Fletcher has finally got his own office. He and the team have a new set of challenges to rise to, including the impending royal visit of HRH Prince Charles. The question is, which of the management team will get to shake the royal hand?
Head of BBC brand Siobhan Sharpe and her team at Perfect Curve have been tasked with giving a makeover to the BBC coverage of Wimbledon following rumours of a bid from a rival broadcaster. Her response is a brand mash-up to end all brand mash-ups.
Meanwhile, over on the creative frontline, entertainment format producer David Wilkes is trying to come up with the next big factual entertainment series after Britain's Tastiest Village failed to fly. He's got the title - Up Town, Down Town - he just hasn't got a show or a cast.
Finally, intern Will Humphries's security pass won't let him into the building. Is it a technical problem or something more significant?
Episode 2
This episode of the award-winning W1A sees a game of management musical chairs with the advertising of a new and important role - namely, the head of better.
Anna Rampton, head of output, thinks she knows all about better and goes for the top job armed with the latest of entertainment-format producer David Wilkes's ideas - Family Face-Off, which Lucy Freeman reworks into something almost broadcastable. Meanwhile, generic head of comedy and/or drama Matt Taverner continues to tinker unhelpfully with Home Truth, Lucy's passion drama project.
Top of the agenda for the damage limitation team this week are rumours that Newsnight anchor Evan Davis is to be a contestant in the forthcoming series of Strictly Come Dancing - news that doesn't go down well with head of news and current affairs Neil Reid, who is less than happy that the main presenter of the BBC's flagship (and arguably only) current affairs programme will be seen 'anywhere near sequins'.
Things get more complicated when it transpires that BBC brand consultant Siobhan Sharpe is behind this latest move for Evan. It falls to Ian Fletcher as head of BBC values and arch-limiter of damage to find an elegant solution to the problem.
Meanwhile, ex-intern Will Humphries, recently appointed PA to the head of values, makes life more difficult for Izzy, the object of his desire. He accidentally hijacks her computer software while showing off his newly acquired training on the BBC's foolproof software Syncapatico.
Episode 3
Former head of output Anna Rampton has been crowned director of better. No-one on the management team is quite clear what the job entails, but one thing is certain - whatever it is, the concept of better needs to be announced to the world at large.
Tracey Pritchard, senior communications officer, suggests an event in the BBC Radio Theatre, but brand manager Siobhan Sharpe has altogether more awesome ideas - none of which involve the words radio or theatre. She encourages the team to think big and global, champagne and celebrities. Now it's just down to Anna Rampton to sell herself and the idea of 'betterness' globally.
Elsewhere, format-entertainment executive David Wilkes continues his seemingly unstoppable rise through the organization with some surprising job news, and the BBC mega-hi-tech software programme Syncopatishare (designed to make life easier for busy executives) is proving difficult to master. Especially for ex-intern Will.
Finally, director of strategy Simon Harwood comes up with a brand new management structure for the BBC, which is essentially the old one rotated 90 degrees - one which threatens to put the director of better bang in the centre of things and head of values Ian Fletcher right at the margins. But Ian offers up an alternative and altogether more creative vision.
Episode 4
It's all change on the corporate merry-go-round. In his new role as senior executive, Primetime Factuality, consistently lucky David Wilkes needs to flesh out the programme idea behind One Big Family. Not having any ideas himself he turns for inspiration to Izzy Gould in her new role as development producer.
On the verge of leaving the BBC, Lucy has been persuaded to take on a new job as head of Inclusivity. One of her first jobs is to head up discussion on the Way Ahead Task Force around inclusivity targets - targets which become increasingly important to hit with Charter renewal just around the corner and an imminent meeting of the Cross Parliamentary Inclusion Action Watch Dog Group at Westminster.
Enter fearless Siobhan Sharpe whose idea of viralising Muslim BBC Weather presenter Sadiq Iqbal looks like keeping the watchdogs happy. But Sadiq seems more interested in his colleague, news anchor Azia Zamani, than in becoming a national icon.
As ever it's down to head of values Ian Fletcher to try and steer the BBC ship through increasingly choppy waters.
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