Root

The actor will this time take the character to Miami for the chaos of the World Cup, involving 48 teams and 16 venues

Hugh Bonneville is back as Ian Fletcher, and this time around the BBC’s former Head of Values is in America, dealing with the World Cup.

The Downton star, who first introduced Fletcher in the Olympics-spoofing series Twenty Twelve and then brought him back for W1A, said that playing Ian again was so painful it was akin to a nasty visit to the dentist. “It’s a bit like root canal in that you know there’s a massive well of poison in your mouth and it’s got to be dealt with. And after it’s finished, it’s rather nice,” he laughed. “But the process itself is agony.”

Hugh, 62, says that Ian Fletcher has “evolved” since the last time we saw him. “Although, ‘evolution’ is, of course, an interesting word, conjuring images of change. “If Ian was a lapel pin it would be enamelled with the words, Stay Calm. The seas may be tossed and blown but Ian will be neither tossed and certainly not blown.”

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But he questions how much Ian has actually learned from the chaos of his past experiences. “The tragicomedy of life is that we may think we develop and change but actually most of us reset at the end of each day to catastrophically normal and – if we can afford one – a take-away.”

One new element in this series is a potential romance between Ian the terribly keen VP Sustainability Sarah Campbell (Chelsey Crisp).Writer John Morton says he “can’t remember” if the actually happens, while Hugh says cryptically: “During this series Ian’s eyes are opened a teeny bit to emotional opportunity. Then again, he’s also recovering from a detached retina.”

The actor admits his own football experience as the Under 11 B Team goalie at his junior school was an unhappy one. “I was fat and I was rubbish at running up and down. So I was put in goal. It was the days where you wore a padded top as a goalie, which was quite a warm garment, actually. So that was nice. I was quite cosy, toddling up and down in my little goal, pretending to stretch, in my green, figure-hugging little duvet. I don’t think I ever saved a ball.”

Morton said that none of the shows are actually about what they appear to be, and that they all work as standalone programmes. “Although W1A was about the BBC, this appears to be about football and 2012 was about the Olympics, none of them are really about those things,” he explained. “That’s what they’re tussling with on the surface, but underneath is where the real stuff is happening. Anybody that’s trying to organise anything with a group of people will, I hope, recognise this. Those dynamics I think are pretty much universal.”

He said that the BBC was the show’s natural home. “There’s a sort of BBCness about Ian Fletcher, a guy who’s kind of hamstrung by trying to do the right thing all the time. And I have, just personally, a huge amount of respect and affection for the BBC. I think they’re one of the best things we do. I think they’re very, very precious. And W1A was never intended to be a takedown, just as this isn’t, of anybody or anything.”

– Twenty Twenty Six, BBC Two, 10pm, Wednesday 8 April

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Pity the person with a hard act to follow, particularly if it’s his own. George W. Bush is such a person. For three months, he has shone as the take-charge leader of a powerful nation reeling from an unexpected blow. A quiet sense of triumph now pervades Washington’s inner circles.

But here’s the hard-act-to-follow part, and the irony of President Bush’s situation: In declaring a war on terrorism and the states that harbor terrorists, Bush’s policy of rooting out terrorism wherever it thrives plunks his administration smack into the middle of the world’s trouble spots.

Merely to list the breeding grounds for terrorism is to suggest the scope of the challenge: Sudan, Somalia, Colombia, Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, Chechnya and, yes, Saudi Arabia. Here is the underbelly of globalization: countries rendered unstable by the absence of power or its autocratic concentration

The speed with which success has come to the American campaign in Afghanistan exacerbates the problem. Had the conflict there dragged on, people might have forgotten Bush’s pledge to root out terrorism. Today, still fresh in mind, it attracts world attention.

The havens of terrorists are either dysfunctional countries in need of nation-building or autocratic regimes sowing the seeds of despair that sprout fanatics.

Turning these retrograde states into open, self-sustaining communities will require a generosity of spirit and patience for study that Bush’s go-go team has yet to demonstrate.

Worse, the expense of promoting economic growth, public schooling and human rights in failing states will run athwart the Bush administration’s priority to cut taxes. Bringing poor countries into the global economy will require opening our doors to their goods. Yet low-wage commodity exporters seeking American buyers are sure to mobilize calls from Congress for protection against unfair competition.

Complicating these demands is the arena of power from which Bush will have to lead. While fighting the war in Afghanistan, he makes decisions as commander in chief. The George Bush who must fashion a successful foreign policy to eradicate terrorism acts as head of the executive branch of a three-part government designed by the U.S. Constitution to operate through checks and balances.

The Bush people have emphasized that we are in this fight for the long haul. The “long haul” they have in mind may be strictly military, but their words have nurtured hopes of a sustained effort to get at the stubborn causes of poverty and fanaticism.

Nation-building, as candidate Bush well knew, is a messy business where trial and error–the only possible approach–consumes endless months and billions of dollars.

The bright side of the picture is that many of America’s allies have also been singed by terrorism, either from dissidents inside their country or on their borders. Spain has problems with its Basque separatists, Turkey with the Kurds, Russia with Chechnya and China with its Muslim Uighurs calling for an “Eastern Turkey.” Their national self-interest inclines them to cooperate with the United States.

At the end of the Gulf War, the elder George Bush, enjoying similarly high approval ratings, declared victory after routing Saddam Hussein’s army. He then precipitately announced the arrival of a new world order.

Within months, that phrase had become a term of derision and his ratings plummeted.

But if George W. Bush stays the course and builds from the ground up, he could usher in a new world order and secure for himself the greatness that eluded his father.

*

Joyce Appleby is a professor emeritus from UCLA and past president of the American Historical Assn.