Ian Fletcher

Ian Fletcher is Head of Deliverance for the Olympics Deliverance Commission, tasked with getting London ready for the 2012 Games. He is decent, exhausted, and permanently trying to hold a straight face while his team generates one small catastrophe after another. He believes, against all evidence, that this can still go well.

Hugh Bonneville plays him as the last sane man in the building, which is the classic mockumentary trick, but he never lets Fletcher curdle into contempt for his colleagues. The comedy comes from his patience visibly costing him something — a man trying to manage disaster with a diary, a countdown clock, and diminishing hope.